


Pyrolysis

by raisingmybanner



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Blind Roy Mustang, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Post-Promised Day, Pre-Canon, Romance, Slow Burn, War, Young Royai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 64,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25615819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisingmybanner/pseuds/raisingmybanner
Summary: Something sparks in the air, like the precursor to flame. Something he hasn’t felt in years, but jumps up like it had been lying in wait. He’s felt the heat, the danger, the smoldering burn. But he’s always buried it under one more thing, one more thing, one more thing.Pyrolysis, transitioning to flame.
Relationships: Maes Hughes & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 59
Kudos: 100





	1. Part 1 - Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes before we jump in:  
> \- This fic takes place over a large span of time: pre- and post-canon with a few dips into the events of the show. Jumps in time will usually be marked by date headings, so hopefully that will forestall any confusion.
> 
> \- It is mostly canon compliant, with the obvious difference being that Roy does not regain his sight. Any other differences are due to forgetfulness rather than intentionality and should not affect your memory of canon too much. 
> 
> \- I decided to let Roy remain without his sight in this fic. I don’t explore the why’s of that in the story, so I am putting my explanation at the bottom of this chapter in case anyone is curious.

**— 1920 —**

The apartment is quiet. Not quite the settled silence of the middle of the night, but not the bustling noise of the day. Twilight brings a hazy peace that’s almost cozy; traffic outside has slowed, and only the occasional murmur of voices through the walls reminds him that he has neighbors.

The radio continues humming with whatever program follows the evening news, a soothing backdrop of conversation that he doesn’t have to participate in. Water gurgles through the pipes in inconsistent rushes. Hawkeye’s voice in the kitchen is indistinct as she says something to Hayate, and the sound of his food tumbling into the metal bowl is softened by the walls and corners between them.

Despite the peace, Roy’s fingers run over the same sentence three times before he realizes he’s not making any progress.

Annoyed, he closes the book and puts it on the coffee table. Possibly a little harder than necessary, but at least Hawkeye isn’t—

“Are you alright?”

He scowls. She must have come back into the living room quietly enough that he didn’t notice.

“Yes,” he snaps, then sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Pre-election nerves?” she says, and her voice is amused in a way that he thinks most people wouldn’t notice. But _he_ notices. Mostly because it’s often directed at him, when she’s trying not to laugh at him.

He almost denies it, then thinks better of the impulse. She’s right, and he gains nothing by pretending she isn’t.

“Yes,” he admits, narrowing his eyes against the blow to his pride that is irrational and _yet._

She hums a sort of acknowledgement, kindly not poking fun at him, and he hears her sit in the chair across from him in the small room

“It’s a close race,” he says, as if he needed to explain himself to the person who had been at his side for the entire campaign. _And decades before that,_ his brain supplies, further adding to his self-directed annoyance.

“Grummand doesn’t stand a chance,” she says, with a steady confidence that’s reassuring in spite of the fact that it’s objectively incorrect.

“He’s the incumbent,” Roy reminds her.

“But he was _appointed,”_ she points out, tripping them into a familiar argument that carries no heat. “The people didn’t pick him.”

“He’s been an excellent fuhrer.”

“Sure, but he didn’t have a loyal following before he became fuhrer. All of his support has been built in the last five years, same as you.”

“I haven’t been campaigning that long,” he argues.

“Not officially.”

He can hear the smile in her words and rolls his eyes.

“I have _not_ been campaigning.”

“Please, Mustang. Walking around with you has _always_ been like walking around with a political candidate. I’m pretty sure you’ve been campaigning your whole life.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“That’s why I replaced myself with Hayate.”

He laughs at that, and he can feel some measure of calm easing through his muscles as she laughs, too. It relaxes him into the chair, at least by a few inches.

“Hayate doesn’t complain _nearly_ as much,” Roy says.

“And he’s much better for pictures,” Hawkeye agrees.

Unbidden, his mind strikes up a vision of Hawkeye. An amalgamation of memories trying to approximate what she looks like _now_. The bright anger from when they first met. The tired formality from Ishval. The steadfast loyalty when they finally made it back to Amestris.

In his mind, her hair is hanging down straight as it used to when they first met, the edges of it just short enough to slip inside her collar as she moved around. She had cut it short for the war, then wore it up once it grew again. But she wore it down again now, he knew. She complained about Hayate tangling in it, and he could hear her pulling it back when she worked on papers for the campaign.

He didn’t ask why she wore it down now, though it puzzled him. He had assumed that her drastic haircut after joining the military was a clear message that she didn’t want anything to do with her life before. He had assumed he would never see her hair down again, except when she was trying to disguise her appearance.

 _Well, I was right about that, at least,_ he realizes with a sardonic shake of the head. He can only _imagine_ what her hair looks like now. He doesn’t even know if she had grown it longer, or kept it the same length. She had never mentioned it.

He wants to tell her that she looks better in pictures than _Hayate,_ but he hesitates. She’ll just argue. He can’t see, she’ll say, so what does he know?

“Photographers love a dog,” Hawkeye is saying before he can decide if he wants to start that argument. “He makes you seem approachable.”

She meant better for his _image_. Not better—

He shakes his head again. He’s tired. Too tired.

“You know I’m right,” she says.

“Yes, yes,” he says, waving a hand dismissively.

“Hey.”

The tone in her voice is different, arresting. He lifts his face toward her on instinct, a lifetime of instinct that he will probably never shake even though the action is useless now.

“What?” He almost says _lieutenant_ without thinking. An old habit, as neither of them have been military for years. The word sounds unfinished without it, and for some reason that makes him nervous, unbalanced.

“No matter what happens tomorrow…” she starts, and the words are rushed and a little reticent — like she’s nervous and is speaking against her better judgment. She doesn’t do that often. She is always so studied in her words. Even when she says things that almost bring his world crashing around his ears.

_“And what would you do after you shot me, Lieutenant?”_

_“I don’t plan on staying in this world much longer.”_

“You know that — even if you don’t win the election — you can try again.”

“I know,” he says slowly.

Somehow that hadn’t been what he had expected her to say.

But he doesn’t know _what_ he had expected her to say, and that makes him feel unbalanced again.

He hears her blow out a breath of air, exasperated. He almost narrows his eyes before he realizes she’s exasperated with herself, and not him. For once.

“You have a good dream,” she says, trying again, and something about the words is small. Young. Like two kids on a riverbank, thinking they were old enough to know anything.

“I know,” he says again, but his voice comes out small, too.

She hesitates. He can hear it, feel it. Maybe it’s the nerves. Maybe it’s the deadly nostalgia for a time he thinks both of them would rather forget. But something sparks in the air, like the precursor to flame. Something he hasn’t felt in years, but jumps up with a vicious heat like it had been lying in wait.

Well, that’s not strictly true. He’s felt the heat, the danger, the smoldering burn. But he’s always buried it under one more thing, one more thing, one more thing.

Pyrolysis, transitioning to flame.

_“It can’t be what you want it to be.”_

Two kids, thinking they knew anything.

Before he can decide how to bury it again, again, again, she stands.

“I should go get some sleep,” she says.

“Tomorrow will be a long day,” he agrees automatically, standing also.

He doesn’t have a perfect picture of the living room anymore. The furniture has been moved a few times, and pieces have been replaced as they grew worn. But he thinks she’s a few feet away, if she was sitting in the chair he thought she was.

So he’s startled when he feels something brush his sleeve, and it takes a moment to realize she’s moving past him. He steps to the side, trying to give her space even though she’s already behind him.

“Good night, Mustang.”

“Just Roy,” he says before he realizes that’s what he’s going to say, and her footsteps stop.

She laughs, and he smiles.

“Goodnight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it this far -- thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy it. Reviews are sincerely appreciated. <3 I'll be updating with a chapter or two weekly until I finish.
> 
> In case anyone is curious about my reasoning for Roy staying blind...
> 
> In my mind, Roy is intimately aware of how philosopher’s stones are created, and the terrible price for their existence. At the same time, he is deeply pragmatic and knows that the ones in existence will be used eventually, in spite of their unconscionable beginnings. He might even argue that they should be used, because otherwise all the people will have really and truly died in vain.
> 
> However, he has a real hesitation with using one on himself, for a non-fatal injury. Being blind affects his life, sure. It definitely makes things more complicated. But ultimately, it doesn’t stop him from achieving the things he wanted to achieve: political power, positions of authority, etc. It keeps him from being an effective weapon, maybe, but I think he is ready to be done with all that, honestly.
> 
> With all that being said, Jean Havoc is still healed. His paralysis is much more arguably keeping him from the quality of life he would want, and he is lacking the full and visceral context of what a philosopher’s stone truly entails that Roy has. 
> 
> Roy would want him to be healed, I think, and would call that acceptable use; it gives Havoc is life back. Healing his own blindness would not be. It’s hard and bad and inconvenient but — ultimately workable. It will slow him down but not stop him.


	2. Part 1 - Chapter 2

**— 1902 —**

_“I’m taking on a student,”_ her father had said, as if it was nothing. As if Riza had not spent as long as she could remember trailing after her father and tracing transmutation circles on foggy windows, in the dust on the table. As if Riza had not spent her entire childhood waiting for the day when he would declare her ready to learn how to be an alchemist at last.

 _“What if we don’t get along?”_ she had said stupidly, already cringing as the words came out of her mouth.

 _“I don’t see why it would matter,”_ he had said, looking up from his research with a slight crease in his brow. _“You won’t need to see much of each other.”_

 _“But we will have lessons together,”_ her mouth continued, against the strict advice of her brain. It was like watching an automobile slowly spin out on the icy drive; she was powerless to stop the impending destruction.

_“What?”_

_“Aren’t I ready_ yet _, father?”_ she had shouted in frustration, fists curling at her sides.

It was the last outburst she would have for a long time.

_“I have a far more important job for you, Riza. Besides, you would never be a strong alchemist. Not nearly strong enough for fire. Now, don’t shout. It’s not becoming. I’ve told you before.”_

Sometimes she wished he would get _angry._ They could fight, and maybe she would win sometimes. She can’t win against a stone. She can’t shout down a wall.

The first student arrived the next day. And after him, another. And another. Young men and women arrived at the house with bright eyes and high expectations, and when the alchemist didn’t teach them a single circle, they left in frustration. Some stayed for weeks, others for months. By the time Riza turned 16, there had been too many students for her to count. Her own desire to do alchemy faded more with each student she met and watched. Her father was even more demanding as a teacher than he was as a father. If this is what it was to learn alchemy, Riza was glad to have escaped it. Only the traitorous evidence across her skin would mark her as being connected to this harsh career.

When her father’s last student arrived, Riza didn’t even mark the day. He would only be here for a few months at the most; what was the point? She smiled her good little smile and showed him to his room. Worried with her sleeves, wondering unnecessarily if the material was thin enough for him to see through, though she knew it wasn’t. Her father wouldn’t have let her own anything that could compromise his research.

She smiled at his flirting, noting his dark hair, his dark eyes, his easy smile. He was older than she was, she guessed. Handsome, but something about him gave her pause. She was used to the students flirting with her. They soon learned that earning her affections gained them nothing in her father’s eyes, and they stopped.

It had only taken a few broken hearts for Riza to stop, too.

It’s not until she makes her excuses and leaves to prepare dinner that she realizes what gave her pause. She blows her bangs out of her eyes with a sigh as she pulls a pot out of a cupboard.

He’s just acting. Like she’s acting. Playing the part given him, like she is. Fulfilling his fate. His _destiny._

She slams the pot on the stove harder than she means to as her breath quickens. A combination of anger and hurt slams through her, the former quickly overtaking the latter. His destiny will lead him into a profitable career, an enviable position. Even when he leaves, he will find another teacher if he has any alchemical skill.

Her fate is to be a living book full of information she can never touch. More useful in existence than in action. Just as valuable dead and dissected as she is now, stirring together the ingredients for soup.

But she schools her breathing. Counts the agitated stirring of the wooden spoon until it slows to a more acceptable pace. There’s no use getting angry. It does nothing. Sixteen years of living with her father taught her that well enough.

* * *

This student doesn’t leave. Roy, is his name. She doesn’t bother remembering it at first, just calling him “sir” since most students seem to think they deserve that title anyway. But he always corrects her.

 _“Just Roy,”_ he says over and over with an easy smile and a wink, until she finally acquiesces.

Mostly to make him stop winking. It’s exhausting to be hit on by an unending stream of students, and she has enough in her life to exhaust her.

She doesn’t realize that he’s gotten under her skin until one day late in summer when her father sends them both out to pick the last of the berries before the scorching heat renders them useless.

“He must really like these berries,” Roy says after almost ten minutes of silent gathering. “He’s very … diligent in his instruction.”

“He doesn’t waste time,” Riza agrees without looking at him.

A few more minutes of silence pass before Roy talks again.

“So, why are we picking berries instead of doing our normal grueling tasks?” he asks. His voice is light, but she can tell that he wants to know the answer.

Alchemists and their curiosity. She shakes her head in exasperation, but the normal frustration doesn’t take hold. She almost grins. That surprises her so much that she almost doesn’t answer.

“I can them,” she says. “We use them all year long in his favorite cakes.”

She doesn’t say that picking the berries in the driving sun and suffocating humidity is far from the most grueling part of the task. The rest of the day will be spent stewing and preserving the berries, trapped in the kitchen as the heat becomes unbearable. Leveraging the top half of her body out the small window in a desperate bid for _air._

“You can them?” Roy says, shaking her out of her despondent reverie. “By yourself?”

“Yes,” she says defensively, and her eyes flick up to his in a challenge. She’s surprised by the look on his face, and it thankfully forestalls whatever ill-advised words were about to drop out of her mouth.

“That’s a lot of work for one pretty girl,” he says, like he knows anything about canning. But the usual flirting statement falls flat, and there’s a slight frown on his brow. “And the kitchen isn’t well-ventilated.”

Something pushes air from her lungs and squirms under her skin. She blinks at him, then yanks her eyes back to the berry bushes.

“I’m perfectly capable,” she snaps. _“Sir.”_

He’s silent for a moment, and her hands grab for the berries without taking care to separate the good from the bad.

“Just Roy,” he says quietly. Without his usual exaggerated tone and almost _audible_ wink, it sounds different. When she doesn’t respond, he continues. “I’m sure you’re capable of a lot more than that. I wasn’t expressing distrust in your _abilities.”_

“Then what _were_ you saying?” she challenges, her words still harsh with the confusing muddle of emotions rocketing through her.

“That you shouldn’t _have to_ ,” he snaps back, and his tone startles her for just a moment before what feels like the anger of the last five years comes roaring to the surface.

“And who are _you_ exactly to tell me what I can’t do?” she says, and she’s standing up straight though she can’t remember how she got there. The echo of her words against the nearby hills tells her she’s shouting. She hadn’t realized that either.

“I don’t know, a concerned party?” he says, not flinching at her outburst but straightening up slowly with a maddening amount of self-control.

“Well, stop being concerned!” she says, and she’s still shouting. The automobile is spinning again, and she’s just watching and waiting to see what kind of damage will be done this time.

“I can’t help being _concerned,”_ he says in exasperation, his voicing edging dangerously on angry.

The rush of fury in Riza’s chest mounts painfully at that slight provocation.

“You’re _temporary,”_ she hisses, stepping closer to him and raising a finger like she was going to accuse him, or maybe jab him in the chest. She’s not sure which. “You’ll be gone soon enough, just like all the others. Don’t pretend to be _concerned._ You won’t remember any of this in a year.”

“I’m not going _anywhere!”_ Roy says, and he’s finally shouting too.

The relief of anger reciprocated almost overwhelms her. Pure giddiness rushes through her, and her limbs are suddenly weak. She falls to her knees on the ground, giggling uncontrollably.

“Of course you are,” she says between giggles. Her vision is wobbly and unfocused. She’s pulling in air spasmodically. Something white flickers into her vision. “Once you realize he won’t teach you anything. Why would you stay?”

The white object freezes, and when she blinks she sees it’s a handkerchief. A handkerchief?

“What did you say?” his voice is quiet but furious, and it’s so heady that Riza can’t catch her breath.

No one had ever been _angry_ at her.

_No one._

“What did you say?” he repeats, louder this time. “What do you mean, he won’t teach me anything?”

“No one is good enough for him,” she says, and a stray giggle sounds almost demonic before she swallows the last of them. “He won’t teach anyone so much as how to light a pipe. Says fire alchemy is too great of a responsibility to give to the _stupid._ ”

A whoosh of air tickles her bangs against her forehead at the same time as she registers it as a sigh from Roy. She jerks her head up quickly, not realizing he had been so _close,_ and finds him almost looking amused.

A few inches from her face.

She pulls back immediately, sitting back on her heels. He doesn’t react, though his eyes follow her motion. Dark and watchful.

“What?” she says, frowning and defensive once more.

“He taught me how to light a pipe yesterday,” he says simply.

To her gaping, he just offers the handkerchief properly.

“You’re crying,” he says when she doesn’t take it right away.

“I’m not,” she snaps, snatching the handkerchief and narrowing her eyes at him when he has the audacity to laugh. She scrubs it across her face, horrified to pull it away damp. “I’m _not.”_

“Okay, alright,” he says, lifting his hands slightly in surrender. “You’re not crying, Miss Hawkeye. I’m not one to argue with a beautiful woman.”

For the first time, his little prod of flirting actually makes her blush.

That makes her angry again, but the anger feels different. It’s like there’s room in her ribcage for it now. It’s not sharing space with five years of arguments unsaid.

“Just Riza,” she says, in a mocking facsimile of his own flirty refrain.

The smile that breaks out over his face is so genuine that it stuns all her anger back to wherever it hides when she isn’t feeling it.

“Riza,” he says. “That’s a nice name.”

And her traitorous heart beats faster.

* * *

Roy is right. He doesn’t leave. Months stretch into a year, and he’s still there. Berry picking turns to smoky fires to get rid of the profusion of leaves that always gather in their little valley. Burning smoke in their eyes turns into endless monotonous days trapped in the house as blizzard after blizzard keeps them homebound. Steaming mugs of rationed coffee turn to torrential spring thunderstorms.

Roy never stops flirting.

Riza never flirts back.

But she thinks that something in his eyes changes. She thinks she catches him looking at her more. Looking away when she turns.

Each season seems to physically weigh on his shoulders, and by the time the rain evaporates into the eternal muggy air of summer he is quieter and more serious than he was. He’s older now, and as fall starts to creep on the valley once more, she realizes he’s never mentioned his birthday. Her own birthday had passed with barely any recognition, but her father _had_ recognized it. Asked her to make a small cake, gave her a smile.

And another few inches of research, but that had been entirely separate from her birthday celebration.

“When is your birthday?” she asked over dinner.

“I’m not sure,” he says after only a beat. “We always celebrated on the new year because it seemed easiest.”

“We’ll have a cake for you this year,” her father promised, with a smile Riza had started to grow familiar with in its strangeness. Pride, for Roy. For his accomplishments. Different from the smile he gives her: soft and affectionate. Based on the person she was born to be 17 years ago and nothing to do with who she is now.

“That’s kind,” Roy says, but Riza notices that his eyes don’t leave his plate.

Winter comes again, and the turn of the new year coincides with a blizzard’s end. Riza bakes a cake at her father’s request and they celebrate Roy’s birthday; then when the house is dark and quiet she pulls on all the layers she can assemble in silence and steps outside. Half her clothes are still damp from being outside earlier and shoveling a path to the well. When she had gone out again later, a wider path had been cleared with edges too precise to be anything but alchemy. Her father always remembered to clear the snow at some point, but Riza had given up trying to get him to do it early in the day years ago.

She curls her fingers inside her wet gloves and breathes in air that hurts her lungs. Like the smoke that had been her only sibling, ever-present and unmistakeable, but _cold._ She knows this is dangerous cold. She can feel the warning push of it through her thick hat, biting at her ears. She won’t be able to stay out long.

She lengthens her stride and follows the path cleared by her father as far as it goes. After more than a week trapped inside, the ability to walk in one direction for more than eleven steps sets her agitation somewhat at ease.

The path stretches longer than her father usually bothers, winding past the well and joining up with the footpath that leads to the river in one direction and the road to town in the other. The footpath is cleared too, Riza notes with no small surprise. Her father never ventured this far. Maybe—

She hears footsteps ahead of her, powdery light in the snow that looks almost like sand. A familiar silhouette. Tall. Wide shoulders.

Something flutters in her chest and anger wars with it.

“What are you doing out?” she asks as he draws closer.

“Walking,” he says, and his voice sounds amused, which annoys her further. “I’d ask what you’re doing, but a gentleman never inquires after a lady’s motives.”

“It’s awfully cold for a walk,” she says, folding her arms.

“I thought someone ought to use the path I cleared before it snows again,” he says. “And I had no idea I would be interrupting your midnight constitutional.”

He bows, deep and formal, and it makes Riza’s cheeks heat up in the most irritating way.

“Stop that,” she says, then blinks in surprise that she said it aloud and not in her head, as she had done for over a year.

“Stop what?” he asks, turning slightly. His face, which had been in the shadow of the moon, now catches the silver light in its sharp planes.

“I’m not a lady, I’m not anyone to be bowing about,” she says heatedly. Since she made this bed she might as well lie in it. “You know that by now, so I know you must be mocking me. And I don’t _like it.”_

Her words are sharpened at the end with the hurt and confusing fluttery heat she had been ignoring for a year or more. She’s tired of being his plaything, his little side project, his—

But the way he’s looking at her now derails that train of thought more efficiently than any broken rail tie. His dark eyes capture the moonlight and refract it in a way that should frankly be illegal during any sort of angered conversation. Any playfulness about his mouth is gone now, and it’s a serious line that makes her heart thud ominously.

“I’m not mocking you,” he says, and his voice is quiet. Almost — abashed? “I’m … sorry. I didn’t know. It was stupid.” He runs a hand through his hair, and Riza realizes that he’s truly discomfited, for the first time she has ever seen. “It’s a habit, I suppose,” he says almost to himself, but still aloud.

“It’s a bad one,” she snaps, because she doesn’t know what else to do with this strange display. The fluttering is trying to get out it’s _trying_ and she _won’t let it._

He winces. _Winces._ Something in her feels triumphant and something else plummets to her toes.

“I apologize, Riza,” he says, and his eyes hold hers.

“Just stop it,” she says shortly, then whirls and stalks back to the house.

She thinks she hears him say something behind her, but she’s not sure.

* * *

Riza finds Roy during what he continues to call her “midnight constitutionals” after every blizzard. She never says anything to him, but he is almost always there. He acts surprised every time. He bows and flirts and jokes, as he always does, but there’s some restraint now. It’s not as brazen. His apology threads through his revised words, and the fluttering inside of her grows worse.

Without any conversation on the subject, they find each other after thunderstorms once the weather warms, trudging through moonlit slush and then mud. The nights grow hotter, and they shed their redundant layers in favor of cooler clothing in a vain attempt to circumvent the stifling air.

“You have something — hold still,” Roy says suddenly, cutting off whatever meaningless conversation they had been having.

The vague tone of alarm in his voice makes Riza freeze, imagining a spider or beetle crawling on her. His fingers reach quickly, brushing against the back of her neck that she’d forgotten was exposed. The contact sends thrills of surprise and fluttering down her spine as she suddenly remembers tying her hair up earlier that evening after retiring to her room. She’d forgotten to put it down again before walking and—

“What _is_ that?” Roy breathes, and his fingers are still resting on her skin. Warm. Sticky with humidity. Riza can feel her heart clambering up her throat and spins away from his hand.

Quickly, too quickly, she pulls the tie from her hair and feels the heavy curtain fall again. Damp with a day of sweat that never evaporated in the wet air. Her breath is coming too fast now.

“Riza?” Roy says, and there’s anger in his voice again. It should frighten her, maybe, but she isn’t frightened. It calms her breathing enough that she stops seeing spots.

“Why do you have a transmutation circle on your neck?” he asks, his voice harsh.

“That’s none of your business,” she says, but the anger isn’t rising to meet his this time and her voice is too small.

The sound she hears next is something between a growl and groan, and she snaps her head up to see what Roy is _doing._

His head is bowed, his fist clenched. She can’t see his face, but his voice is clear enough.

“Did your father do that?” he asks, anger flattened down to a dangerous heat.

Her lack of response is enough for him.

“How could he do this to you?” he snaps.

Finally, Riza can speak, and the anger swells at last.

“You know my father, Roy,” she bites off. “Does it really surprise you?”

There’s no response, and then a laugh that sounds more strangled than humorous emanates from the shadow of his face.

“No, I guess not.”

 _And yet you stay,_ she wants to say, but doesn’t. She just nods, and goes back to the house. He doesn’t try to stop her.

She hears him come in almost an hour later.

* * *

Roy still finds her on her late night rambles. He doesn’t mention the tattoo, and neither does she. He’s a little cautious at first, but they slip all too easily back to their talks of nothing under the stars. Mostly, he talks. She presses, asks small questions, then listens to his easy confidence spill out in every answer. He talks mostly in the abstract: different types of government, why some social initiatives work and others don’t, what services should be basic rights of citizens, and so forth. Riza understands little of it at first, but she’s curious too. She’s the daughter of an alchemist, and the thirst for knowledge has been lying in wait for a willing source of information.

Soon she has a framework for politics and begins arguing pros and cons with him. Their discussions often get heated, but neither of them seem to mind. A sigh and a call for truce is enough to clear the air, because neither of them are truly angry. Roy is just passionate about politics, and Riza is — well. She’s passionate too, but not for any reason she would care to think about.

The only thing he doesn’t talk about with any specificity is what he’s going to do when he finishes his training. Maybe Riza had been avoiding asking about it. Maybe Roy hadn’t brought it up on purpose.

But his training is coming to an end. Riza can tell. He has more free time in the afternoons, less time endlessly practicing conjuring and extinguishing the blinding flame she’s so familiar with. The days are numbered, the midnight walks slowly dwindling toward the inevitable end.

Riza finally decides to stop being an idiot and just ask him. _Maybe that will make it easier,_ she thinks, though she won’t say _what_ would become easier.

“I’ll become a state alchemist,” he says with certainty, his eyes flickering over the river. “You have equivalent rank to a major right away; that will give me a head start on climbing through the ranks.”

“Military,” Riza says, almost a murmur. “I suppose I should have guessed.”

“Positions of power should be held by people who care about those under them,” Roy says, and his often-repeated conviction makes Riza smile. The fluttering has surged into something more powerful while she wasn’t looking, and she feels it stuck in her throat when she swallows.

“I’ll do it,” he says, as if her silence were doubt. He half turns to look at her but she looks away.

“I know you will,” she says finally, when whatever it is has dislodged itself.

“Don’t mock me,” he says, and the sharp words disguise hurt — something Riza is familiar enough with in herself to recognize at once.

“I’m not,” she says, turning to him and hoping her eyes convey honesty and not any of the other things she feels. “Not that it matters what _I_ think.”

“It matters to me,” he says, and his eyes land on hers with almost tangible force. She shivers, and it has nothing to do with the cold. It has to do with everything she’s been trying not to think about. The way the moon lights his face, the shine of conviction in his eyes, the strength in his shoulders, and the fact that if she just took a step forward and pushed onto her toes—

No amount of reasoning will keep her feet in place. Roy doesn’t step back, but he does shift slightly, casting the majority of his face into shadow.

“Roy,” she says, a question, a fearful plea. Her buoying anger pushes her onto her toes as it remonstrates her for being a coward, but the moment before she—

Strong hands grip her shoulders, keeping her in place. She feels a surprised huff of breath on her cheek as he turns his head.

“Riza,” he says, and his voice is unmistakably stiff, unsure. Every muscle in her body tenses in abject horror. _No._

“I’m sorry,” he begins slowly. “I don’t think — this isn’t — it can’t be what you want it to be. I’m sorry.”

She’s going to die. She’s going to die right here on the riverbank, and her father will find her corpse in the morning and lament that he’ll need to find a new living parchment.

 _No._ She’s not going to die, as much as she would like to. She’s going to have to extricate herself from the situation as quickly as possible.

“Of course,” she hears herself say, astoundingly calm. “How silly. If you’ll excuse me?”

And the moment he lets go of her shoulders she walks back to the house. Carefully hangs up her coat, lines up her shoes, and then lays in bed marinating in self-loathing until the morning light tells her it’s time for chores.

* * *

Riza thinks she won’t see Roy again on her evening walks, but he turns up again for the next one. Acting like nothing at all had happened, like Riza wasn’t burning up from the inside with unrestrained humiliation. She can’t bear to make an excuse and go back inside, not when she knows this is one of the last times she will see him. Not when, as stupid as she knows it is, _this_ Roy is hers somehow. This Roy that rambles about politics and pokes holes in her arguments, with the moon in his hair and stars swimming in his eyes. Even if _he_ doesn’t want to be hers, these memories are all she will have. And she can’t bear to let them slip through her fingers.

So she pretends too. She’s good at pretending. The rhythm is easy, and sometimes she forgets that she’s pretending.

Sometimes she forgets that she tried to kiss him.

When she remembers, the hot slick of shame and embarrassment courses through her like the heat wave before a storm. But she doesn’t show anything. Just argues with Roy. Punctures his idealism and folds her arms against his annoyed retorts.

Until suddenly her father, never in the best of health, grows all at once gravely ill.

Suddenly, her days and nights are spent tending to him. Washing sheets and tucking them around his mattress just to pull them off the next morning and wash the blood and sick out of them once more. Cooking soup so much that the smell of it turns her stomach for the rest of her life, but it’s all that he will eat.

She sleeps in snatches, two and three hours at a time. Dozing off until the sound of her father coughing and retching drags her back to a reality that seems almost as nightmarish as her rest.

“You have to sleep,” Roy says, and his voice is firm.

She doesn’t look at him, still scrubbing out the soup pot that smells like soup it always smells like soup _no matter how hard she scrubs it—_

“Riza!” he snaps.

“Go away!” she says, scrubbing with all the furious strength she can muster. It is, horrifyingly, a lot less than she thought it would be. “He’s not teaching you anymore. Go get your certification. _Leave!”_

“I owe — him more than that!” Roy says, and the hesitation is so far beyond the comprehension of her sleep-deprived mind that she lets it go. “You need to sleep before you do something dangerous.”

She huffs a brittle laugh, losing her balance and her grip on the pot in one stunned moment. Roy snatches it before the heavy cast iron can land on her foot and certainly shatter it. She’s still blinking, staring at her foot and envisioning the disaster that almost was on a frantic loop, when the pot lowers to the ground next to her. A hand falls on her shoulder, and the weight of it almost makes her exhausted knees buckle.

“Go to sleep,” he says. “Now. I’m taking care of your father. If you try to come out of your room before dawn, I’m going to lock you in.”

She bristles at the order, taking breath to argue, when he continues in a softer voice.

“Hasn’t he taken enough of your life, Riza?”

That brings tears to her eyes with shocking speed, and she chokes on a sob she didn’t even feel coming. Her legs tremble under her, and without a word, Roy slides the arm from her shoulder to wrap around her waist and steady her.

“Just sleep,” he says, walking with her to her room and opening the door. “Trust me to take care of a dying man.”

She collapses sobbing against the door as soon as it closes. She hadn’t let herself think that he was dying, not really. Sick, of course. He often got sick. But _dying?_

He’s dying.

He’s _dying._

Roy didn’t mean it to hurt her; it was obvious. When the doctor stopped visiting, talking only about keeping him comfortable, some part of her knew. It had to. She was just too _tired_ to think about it. To _truly_ think about it.

Her father is dying.

“What’s going to happen to me?” she asks the dark room, unused in days since she usually slept on the floor next to her father’s bed.

The room, of course, doesn’t answer.

And only the thought of Roy opening the door and finding her there makes her crawl to the bed before collapsing with exhaustion.

* * *

Riza doesn’t sleep more than three hours at once until after her father’s funeral. Though Roy takes over the night shift, she’s so used to waking up at every sound that she can’t quite train her body out of the habit. It’s not until she’s back in the silent house, alone, that she finally sleeps through the night. It’s not peaceful sleep, plagued by half-real images of her father in his last hours. Of Roy, closing her door and telling her to sleep over and over and over even though it was day and she wasn’t tired.

The next day a man from the bank comes about the house and she learns that her father hadn’t owned it after all. And that he’d stopped making payments a few months ago, probably about the time he told her they didn’t have much money left for food.

The man has a kind smile, but the papers are not kind. The papers tell her she has nothing. Worse than nothing — she owes money to the bank for her father’s debts, and they are repossessing the house.

“If you have anything of value to sell, maybe we can come to an agreement,” the man says delicately. “Take the day and consider it. I won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”

She wonders idly why he was so specific as she sorts through the cabinets and cupboards in the only home she’s ever known. It’s not until she’s sifting through the last cabinet that she realizes with a start that makes her drop the old rusted tin full of screws and odd parts — the man meant to give her time to run away.

She grits her teeth as anger and shame fight against the terrible sorrow that she has accepted with resignation as much as she hates it. She _won’t run._

And she doesn’t. She finds old jewelry of her mother’s and a few scraps of incomprehensible circuitry and wires that her father told her were valuable. She never knew her mother, and she can’t imagine wearing the heavy golden bracelets and broaches, so she has no regrets handing them to the slightly-surprised man the next afternoon.

“This is all I have” she says. “It’s not enough to pay the debt, but I can work.”

“What skills do you have, Miss Hawkeye?” he asks, not unkindly, but in a way that reminds her so much of her father that she wants to both cry and scream.

“I’m joining the military,” her mouth says, much to the surprise of her brain.

So she does.


	3. Part 2 - Chapter 3

**— 1920 —**

By the time Roy’s alarm goes off the next morning, he is already awake. He can’t say for sure whether he woke with such a burst of adrenaline that he was just fully awake instantly, or whether he had been restlessly dozing for a while when the alarm went off.

Judging by the immediate cold nose in his hand, he guesses the latter. Hayate is clearly wide awake.

“Good morning,” he says, running a thumb over the dog’s snout and smiling at him. “We’ve got a big day today. Are you ready?”

Hayate yips, and Roy hears him scamper backwards with excitement.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Roy says, chuckling at the dog’s antics as he pushes the sheets aside and stands up.

He stretches, rolling his neck and shoulders and wondering _when_ he had gotten so stiff.

_“War makes curmudgeons of us all,”_ Hughes had said once, affecting an exaggerated hunch and limp that had made Hawkeye splutter her soup across the cafeteria table.

_I think I’m just getting old,_ Roy thinks, though the words in the gossip rags swim to the surface before he even finishes the thought.

HANDSOME HERO RUNS FOR FUHRER

POLITICS’ MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR STILL SINGLE?

DASHING CANDIDATE RUMORED TO TRADE KISSES FOR VOTES

_“Stop reading those,”_ Hawkeye had said sternly after she caught him laughing at the last headline, his fingers still on the translated page of Braille from a dutiful Sheska. _“It’s going to make your head even bigger than it already is.”_

He heads to the bathroom to shave, still chuckling at the memory. By the time he finishes, running his fingers along all the edges to make sure he didn’t miss anything, Hayate is whining and trotting after him instead of waiting at the door.

“I’m coming,” Roy tells his impatient companion as he finds the outfit he had chosen yesterday.

He had even double-checked it with Hawkeye to make sure it was the one he thought it was, on the off chance that something had been put away incorrectly in the wardrobe. He hadn’t double-checked an outfit with her in _years,_ and she had ribbed him about it thoroughly, but it was worth it.

He buttons up the dress shirt, careful to start at the bottom and slide his fingers up slowly so he doesn’t misalign it and have Hawkeye sighing his incompetence all over again.

He shrugs on his suit jacket as he walks to the door, reaching for his cane in the doorway and walking into the hallway.

“Yes, we’re going,” he tells Hayate, striding through the apartment with all the haste he can risk.

His apartment _should_ be safe. He doesn’t leave anything lying around, and neither does Hawkeye. But, there had been a lot of people in and out of his apartment in the past several weeks as the campaign had reached a fever pitch in the last push. It only took slipping on a couple of posters that had fallen off the table _once_ for him to start using his cane again.

The cane slowed him down, but bruises were bad for his image. Or so Hawkeye had said, her voice frowning as she examined his temple. Cool fingers on his chin, in his hair, and a sigh that ghosted across his cheek.

It hadn’t bruised. But he can still feel the press of her fingers through his hair, and he buries that quickly under his busy schedule. His photo-op on the way to the polls, which is at seven. His alarm went off at 5:30, so he should still have plenty of time to walk to Hammond’s with Hayate and get breakfast before Hawkeye meets him there with the car.

Roy keeps his mind busy as he walks to Hammond’s and eats his breakfast. He smiles at the people who greet him, waving in what he hopes is the correct direction.

“Vote Mustang!” he says with a cheer that’s almost genuine and a self-deprecating laugh that definitely is.

“Shame, I was planning to vote for the old guy, what’s his name?” drawls a familiar voice as Roy finishes his bagel at the small cafe table in front of the bakery.

“Havoc, good morning,” he says, and some of the cheer seeps through his tone. He can’t help it. Havoc laughs.

“I’ll vote for you if you never say ‘good morning’ to me like that again,” Havoc says, and the scrape of metal on concrete indicates that he sat down in the vacant seat. “Morning, Hayate.”

Hayate’s collar jingles as Havoc strokes him.

“He’s on duty,” Roy says, for the hundredth time.

“I’m hard work,” Havoc retorts, and Roy just rubs the bridge of his nose, all cheer vanished.

“You’re making his life harder.”

“You make his life hard enough, Mustang.”

“That’s what I’m _saying.”_

“Alright, alright,” Havoc concedes. “If it makes you feel better, he ignored me.”

“It does.” He crumples the used paper in front of him and unwraps Hayate’s leash. “Where’s Hawkeye?”

“Got held up with a last-minute story for the _Tribune,”_ Havoc says, standing. “I’ll get that.”

The trash disappears and Roy nods his thanks. He remembers when he would have resented that simple act and is tired just thinking about it. It took a lot of energy to be so irritated all the time.

“I thought the _Tribune_ got what they needed yesterday? I talked to Ms. Hanes for hours.”

“Apparently she was too busy flirting with you to write down all the good sound bites you were saying,” Havoc says. “I’ve got the car illegally parked, so we better walk fast.”

“Did you really park my car illegally on the most important day of my life, Jean?” Roy says, following Hayate as he trails after Havoc. “You know if I get so much as a parking ticket, Grummand’s team will have a field day.”

“It’s _my_ car,” Havoc points out. “And Grummand’s team already knows I’m the black sheep in your patient little fold. They gave up reporting on my questionable behavior months ago.”

He pulls open the door, and Roy climbs in. Hayate hops in and settles at Roy’s feet.

“No comment on the pretty little Ms. Hanes, I see,” Havoc observes, throwing the automobile in gear with such a loud _clunk_ that Roy almost jumps.

“What?” Roy asks, surreptitiously gripping the handle of the door with one hand and touching the top of Hayate’s head with the other.

“We worked hard to mitigate the playboy image, and you just—“

“We? Mitigate?”

“Yes, _mitigate._ I know words, too. And you know I’m on your side,” Havoc says, nudging Roy’s arm with his elbow. “But keep it on the sly. Flirting with reporters is a little on the nose, don’t you think?”

“I wasn’t flirting.”

“Was _she_ flirting?”

“I didn’t think so,” Roy mutters, frowning, and Havoc’s laugh coincides a little too perfectly with the car’s swerve.

“Oh, Roy. Keep your secrets.”

“I’m not—“ He cuts himself off with an uncontrollable noise somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. “Never mind. Just focus on the road, Havoc.”

“I am, I am,” Havoc says, with too much nonchalance for someone who was clearly trying to kill all three of them. “Anyway, we’re here.”

Roy thanks every quasi-deity he can think of, including Hohenheim for good measure, as he yanks the door open. Hayate is only too happy to exit the vehicle too.

“Fuery’s straight ahead!” Havoc calls after him before he can close the door. As soon as the door closes, the engine roars and Havoc is gone.

“Why does he always drive like — like —“

“Like he’s smuggling munitions into the city to aid a military coup?” Roy supplies, his voice flat.

“Yes, that,” Fuery says, laughing. “Morning, sir.”

“Good morning.”

“Photographers are already set up over—“

“Am I late?”

“No, they’re just overeager. Smile, they’re already snapping.”

Although Roy thinks the photo-op is one of the more pointless ones he’s done over the course of this campaign, he smiles as Fuery leads the way to the single voting booth they’ve set up outside the municipal building. Sure enough, the telltale squawk and pop of flashbulbs is already audible as he and Hayate walk up to the booth to cast his vote.

Without being able to see them, the photographers seem like a never-ending crowd shouting directions. Fuery is trying to corral them, but most of them are just ignoring him.

_Poor guy,_ Roy thinks, just as Patricia’s voice joins the fray. Between the two of them, the photos move fairly smoothly and everyone gets what they want. Roy walking into the booth with Hayate, without Hayate, kneeling next to Hayate with the booth in background, holding a campaign poster, Hayate shaking hands with Patricia’s son, Roy with one arm over Fuery’s shoulder and the other behind Patricia’s back.

“That’s all the time we have, sorry!” Roy says when the photographers start clamoring for more. He’s pretty sure one of them tried to tell Patricia to kiss him on the cheek, and he feels sorry for their fate if Patricia heard him. “We have places to be, unfortunately. Thank you for coming out so early! Vote Mustang!”

“Riza should be here by now,” Fuery says quietly, coming up beside him. “She said she would meet us at the back of the building.”

“Excellent,” Roy says, following Hayate as they wind around.

“How’d it go?” Hawkeye asks as they approach the car. Her voice is bright. Not cheery, but thumbing the line between professional and pleasant. “Sorry I missed it.”

“Don’t be,” Roy grumbles.

His fingers brush against the side of the car when he thinks he’s almost at the door. Smooth metal and the light grit of dust, then his fingers wrap around the door handle when it falls into his touch. He lets himself into the passenger side and waits for Hayate to climb in before closing the door.

“That bad?” Hawkeye asks before she shifts, leaning out the window to talk to Fuery. “See you at lunch, Kain! Don’t forget about the corrections for—“

“The _Sentinel_ , I know. I gotta run or I’ll be late. See you!”

“Just exhausting,” Roy says, sinking into the seat and wondering how he’s going to survive the day if he’s already this tired after _one_ event.

Hawkeye puts the car into gear, and Roy feels much less like he’s in mortal peril. Hawkeye must read something on his face, because she chuckles.

“Sorry I left you with Havoc. He drives like those awful transport operators in Ishval.”

“At least they had the excuse of automobiles that were more repair than original material,” Roy says.

“It doesn’t excuse them from driving like maniacs with buggies full of injured soldiers.”

“I’m not arguing that,” Roy replies, remembering his own times on the transport buggies when he had been wounded. The rattling and bumping had injured him more than the bullets and projectiles, he’s pretty sure.

_“I’m going to climb up there and drive this thing myself,”_ Hawkeye had seethed, shooting murderous glares past their fellow soldiers and drilling into the back of the operator’s head.

_“You don’t even know how to drive, sergeant,”_ Roy had pointed out, wincing and swallowing as the buggy lurched and his quickly-wrapped wound shifted under the gauze. The pain was only dulled slightly by the vial of pain reducer Hughes had slipped him, even though all the medics on the front lines had been out for months.

_“I’m sure I could do a better job, sir.”_

_“That sounds like insubordination, sergeant,”_ he had said, trying to smile so she knew he was joking. _“I think Lang outranks you now.”_

_“With all due respect, sir,”_ she tried again, schooling her face into polite blandness, _“My dead father could do a better job.”_

He had laughed, then, or tried to, but couldn’t seem to get enough air. Her face blurred in his vision, then eased into clarity once more. Her eyes were wide as she reached for the gauze.

_“You’re soaking through again. How far away from base camp are we? Lang! How much further?”_

_“Warrant Officer Lang.”_

_“Warrant Officer Lang, my apologies and congratulations on the promotion,_ sir.” Roy had smiled again then at the caustic undertones to her formality that he wasn’t sure anyone else heard. She played games with her respect, using emphasis and pause to convey meaning that seemed to be mostly for her own benefit. A way to stay sane in the constantly shifting ridiculous bureaucracy. He liked that about her.

_“He says we’re less than ten minutes,”_ she said. _“Major?”_

_“I’m still here,”_ he murmured, eyes closed. When had he closed his eyes? _“Can’t kill me… that easily.”_

Was he imagining it, or was she touching his face? Probably brushing away dirt, or blood. Nothing— nothing.

Or he was imagining the fingertips coated with grit, catching on his grimy skin as they skimmed across it. Because he had imagined it before —

“Mustang, are you listening to me?”

“What?”

The present snaps around him all at once, interrupting his reverie. _Now is not the time to lose focus,_ he reprimands himself, but the memory of her fingers, maybe, on his face combines with the lingering coolness on his jaw and it’s harder to shake this time.

_You’re losing it._

“I said that Grummand heard about your visit to the nursing home this morning and invited his whole entourage.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Roy says, irritation at his opponent’s tenacity balanced with appreciation for his friend’s tactics. Running for office against one of the only people he had been friends with since before the world shifted on its axis was a strange feeling. “He probably just wanted to preview his future home. Get a feel for the neighbors.”

Hawkeye is diplomatically silent, but Roy can tell that she’s smiling. Something in the way she breathes out all at once, like she’s surprised at her own amusement.

“Are you staying for this one?” Roy asks.

“For a little while at least,” she says, annoyance lacing her tone. “I need to meet with Ms. Hanes again.”

“Isn’t that just where you were?”

“Yes,” she says, her annoyance more pronounced now. “I’m double-checking her copy.”

“That bad?” he asks, mirroring her earlier question with tempered amusement.

“Just exhausting,” she quips back, but continues almost immediately. “She had barely anything from your interview. I had to give her _all_ the platform statements. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you just _chatted_ with her for hours yesterday.”

“I don’t chat unless I have to,” Roy says, pulling a wry face.

“I know. And anyway, she kept asking questions I’d already answered. I think she’s new to the beat. Some of the language might be over her head still.”

“So you’re checking her work? How selfless.”

She snorts, and he smiles.

“I don’t want the _Tribune_ running the wrong statements tomorrow if you win.”

“If?”

“Yes, _if,”_ she says, her tone that strange mix of firm and amused. “Someone has to keep your ego in check.”

“That’s why I keep you around, Hawkeye.”

“I know. Everyone else is too intimidated,” she deadpans, and the car slows as she pulls into a parking spot. “No idea why.”

“Havoc isn’t intimidated,” he points out.

“You don’t listen to Havoc.”

“ _No one_ listens to Havoc.”

“I guess I’m not putting out my resume anytime soon, then,” she says, opening the door. “Let’s go.”

“If you did, I’d be lost.” He says it like a joke, even though it isn’t, and he’s bad at jokes besides.

But the words are lost, he thinks, in the opening and closing of doors, the shuffle of shoes and paws on cement, because she doesn’t reply.


	4. Part 2 - Chapter 4

**— 1905 —**

Riza keeps the paper Roy gave her after the funeral, with his contact information if she ever needed anything. She folds it and puts it in the pocket of her new uniform, transferring it fastidiously under the mattress every night to keep it from prying eyes. She doesn’t want to have to explain to anyone why a major had given a recruit a way to contact him — not that she planned to do so. _Ever._

But in spite of that, she can’t quite bring herself to get rid of it. Roy is a twisted combination of memories now that she doesn’t have the time or energy to sort out.

He’s the last of her father’s legacy, which might — _should_ — have been hers. He’s kind, and he’s infuriating, and he’s responsible. He kept them both afloat while her father died, when he could have, should have, could have, left. He appreciated her. He rejected her. He is a reminder of her weakest and worst moments. A reminder of a girl that her present self loathes with an easy release of anger even though that girl is barely a few weeks behind her.

She wants desperately to leave everything of her old life behind, which naturally includes her father’s only successful student, but life isn’t as easy as turning a page. It’s messy and tangled and sloppy. The past reaches through and digs its claws into her as she mails envelopes of money from the academy after every paycheck, chipping away at a debt that was never hers. The handwriting of a dead man still covers her back. And the handwriting of a man very much alive wears soft between her fingers.

Something in her heart whispers that she joined the army to protect him, somehow — with every enemy she removed, she made him a little bit safer. Despite that whispering, she has no intentions to ever see him again. She is content to let her emotions do what they must and move her life forward on her own. She cannot turn the page on her past completely, but she can let the lines blur. She can let Roy become a nice memory, in time. The memory of someone who seemed to care, even if not as much as she wanted.

But fate apparently had its own plans.

Her marksmanship skills improve with staggering speed, and she soon outstrips the other enlisted men. Before she quite knows what’s happening, a year has passed and higher-ups are muttering about the need for snipers on the battlefront. Someone slaps a rank on her with a new uniform and a summons to the Ishvalan Border War.

With the new but comforting weight of her gun on her back, she treks to the front lines. Knowing that all the state alchemists with any amount of youth or health have also been called there. Wondering why, after all of this, fate would make her face him again.

* * *

The front lines are bigger than Riza could have even imagined. It takes weeks of aiming and killing and aiming and killing and aiming and killing before Riza sees Roy. He looks so different that she almost doesn’t recognize him, standing next to another man she knows only by face and title — Captain Hughes. When Roy turns to look at her, his eyes almost make her shudder.

There is no trace of moonlight there. No stars.

Only death.

“Do you remember me?” she says, not because she thinks he’s forgotten her, but because she knows her eyes have no celestial reflections either. If they ever did.

They sit and talk for what remains of the lunch hour. Roy — Major Mustang — and the Captain and her. She thinks she will mostly listen. She’s too tired and there are too many thoughts that keep hammering against her skull that will break her if she lets them out. Too many questions and pleas.

But the two men talk about the war, wonder openly about why they’re here. They don’t talk loudly, but they aren’t ashamed of their questioning. They don’t shatter when they say it doesn’t make _sense_ to kill civilians. No one drags them away and court-martials them.

And she opens her mouth to find that the thoughts won’t break her after all. Not when Roy — the Major — looks at her like he thinks the same thing. He doesn’t look broken, only angry.

And though her bones are trembling, she almost smiles.

She knows angry.

She can _do angry._

Especially because she knows him. He only gets angry when there’s a problem in front of him that he can’t solve. She _knows_ him, and he only stays angry until he figures out the answer.

And he always figures out the answer. She just has to stick close enough so she can find the answer, too.

Just like that, the twisted combination of memories gets another tangle of thread, tying it closer to her ribs. She’s going to survive this war. And she’s going to make sure the Major does, too.

* * *

“Breathe, sergeant!”

“The children—“ she chokes, and she doesn’t even recognize her voice.

“They’re already dead,” he says, in a voice that brooks no argument. “Look at me. _Look at me!”_

His voice thunders, inches from her face, and she’s not sure whether it’s fear or duty that drags her eyes back to his. The fire is reflected in them, and it’s almost more horrifying than the corpses he had forcibly pulled her from.

“Breathe! Now!” he shouts in her face. “You cannot break here, sergeant. You _will not break here!”_

He yanks her forehead to his, and his breath accosts her face. Hot like a desert wind, but ragged.

She pulls in air as he does, and she can feel tears trickling down her face. She hates them she _hates them,_ but he’s yelling again and she can’t focus on the tears because she has orders _orders orders orders._

“Let it out! Follow my breaths! Hold yourself together or I’m going to have to do it for you!”

It sounds like a threat, but it’s not. It’s not threatening. Riza can’t understand it so she doesn’t try. She puffs out the air, trying to match the pace of his breath on her face and failing. But he doesn’t yell.

“Again,” he orders. “In, slow. Out, slow. I need you, sergeant.”

She mirrors his breath. Remembers the corpses. Chokes on the breath.

He grabs her chin.

_“Again.”_

She breathes, inhales and exhales mingling together in the inch between them as guns and alchemy spark to life beyond the barrier they’re crouching behind.

“Pull out your gun, or go back to base,” he orders when her breaths are steady.

“I’m staying,” she says, and she’s grateful beyond belief that her voice doesn’t shake.

He pulls back, and she realizes in that moment that his hands are on her face. Grit and sweat slides between his palms and the skin of her jaw, her neck. Her pulse stumbles and she almost chokes again, but she swallows it and shoves it all down, down, down.

His eyes search hers, and she draws her eyebrows together. Willing herself to look more calm than she is. More collected.

She isn’t leaving him. Not when she’s barely killed three different people who almost ended his life. Not when blood is soaking through his uniform and she can see the fatigue behind the furious survival in his eyes.

“Good,” he snaps. “I need you to watch my back.”

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” he says.

They charge back into the battle.

* * *

“Remember what you said at my father’s funeral?”

The Major glances at her before looking back to the horizon. It’s a quiet watch, but he’s never been one to relax just because something is supposed to be easy.

“About what?”

“About — not being able to be happy if you don’t try to make Amestris a better place.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Riza looks at the horizon, too.

“Yes,” he says finally. “I believe I also admitted that it was a childish dream.”

“There’s nothing childish about being kind,” she says, and she sees a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“That’s what you said that day, too,” he says.

“Really?” she frowns. She can’t remember her response from that day. She had mostly been thinking about whether or not to show him the rest of the tattoo. The extent of her father’s research, scrawled across her skin. He had been leaving for the academy that day, so she knew she had to show him right away or not at all.

“Why do you ask?” His voice is softer, in spite of the exhaustion running under every word.

“Are we making Amestris a better place?” she asks, and tears well in her eyes. She frowns in annoyance, ignoring them and willing her tear ducts to reabsorb the precious moisture.

“I don’t know what we’re doing,” he says, and the tone is resigned. But if she listens closely, she can hear the anger there, too. The anger that reassures her he hasn’t given up. “I’ve realized that all we can do is protect the people we care about, and the people with less power than us. If we protect them, and they protect the people they love — that’s the real way to make a difference.”

“Everyone has someone to protect them, except the person at the top,” she muses.

“That’s alright,” he says, and the confidence that used to thread through every word resurfaces without warning. The nostalgia hits her like a physical blow, and she almost misses what he says next. “I’ll be at the top, and I can look after myself.”

“You?” she snorts, forgetting for a moment that he’s a senior officer. Forgetting that they aren’t debating the abstract along the riverbank. “You’ll be dead in a week.”

“Hey!” he turns to her, eyebrows raised in surprised offense. “I’m a _state alchemist,_ sergeant!”

“Unless you plan on staying in the desert, all it will take is a well-placed rainstorm,” she says, deadpan.

His face falls so quickly that she actually _laughs_. It only takes a moment before he’s laughing too. The sound of their laughter is wild with disuse, almost unhinged. Riza can’t remember the last time she laughed, and her ribs ache at the effort when she finally manages to stop.

“I’ll have to make sure I hire someone to watch my six,” he mutters, pretending to be hurt but failing. He’s still smiling.

“As it turns out, I’m a decent shot,” she says, shrugging one shoulder before turning back to the horizon.

“Is that an offer?”

“I think _you_ have to offer the job, major,” she reminds him.

“True,” he says, and when she looks over at him, the moon is in his eyes again.

“It’s a good plan,” she says quietly, speaking to the stars in his eyes. The reflection of a hope and a dream that’s struggling to survive.

“I think so,” he says, looking up at the night sky. The unabashed statement sweeps homesickness through her, and she takes a moment before she can reply.

“I _was_ offering, sir.”

Someone calls out the hour on the other side of camp. A pair of soldiers on watch in another section stand up and stretch, yawning. A clip rattles behind them, someone shifting in position.

“Me too, sergeant.”

She wonders what he will do after he achieves his dream. But she doesn’t ask, because some part of her is scared of the answer.

* * *

The war — the extermination — goes on too long. As far as Riza is concerned, one week was too long. One month was barbaric. But a month passes, and the soldiers that have been stationed here longer remind her that the war has been going on for seven years.

Seven years.

Riza can’t imagine this going on for seven years.

In all practicality, there aren’t that many _people._

She hates that _that’s_ what she thinks as a rationale, but it’s true. Since she arrived, since order #3066, she knows the killing had escalated astronomically. It had turned from a war into a—

She locks that thought away, like she does every time. She can’t think it. She has to stay, because these are her orders and she still has most of her father’s debt to pay off. Because this is her only skill, and her only chance of making enough money to be free.

At least a quarter of the soldiers Riza’s known have accepted a dishonorable discharge to escape the front lines and go back home to whatever they were going to be before the war. She tries hard not to envy them. Not to be bitter that they have _anything_ to go home to.

Then she remembers that at least a quarter of the soldiers she’s known have died. And that helps the envy, though not the bitterness.

Death of her fellow soldiers. Death of the Ishvalans. How much death until the fuhrer would deem the order complete?

How much longer until a bullet found _her_ head?

One month turns to two, then six.

Then a year.

And still, it’s not enough death.

* * *

Eighteen months after the order is issued, and the army has more or less settled into a routine. Run a mission, regroup. Run another mission. Then recon or supply delivery for a day or two. The days pass in a loop of killing and resting. Killing and resting. Every rest is just to prepare for the next kill.

But it _is_ a rest.

“Gracia sent me another letter!”

The group groans as a collective, and Captain Hughes looks shocked and hurt.

“You love hearing what she writes!”

“We don’t,” the Major says, looking to Warrant Officer Brock for backup. “But we know you’re going to tell us—“

“She says there’s a fundraiser her mother is coordinating!” Captain Hughes continues as if the Major hadn’t spoken at all.

Warrant Officer Brock lifts his eyes to heaven for assistance, and Riza has to cough to hide the snort of laughter. Captain Hughes doesn’t notice. He continues to wax eloquent about Gracia’s virtues, detailing everything about the fundraiser that his girlfriend had thought to include.

The Major gives her a look over his shoulder, and she gives him a half smile.

 _That’s Hughes for you,_ her eyes say.

 _Why do we put up with him?_ asks the quirk in his eyebrow.

 _Because he’s our friend,_ her crossed arms reply.

 _I can’t get rid of him,_ says the fingers rubbing the bridge of his nose.

 _You love it,_ she reminds him with a small poke out of her tongue that no one notices but him. He snorts.

“What are you two talking about?” Warrant Officer Brock says, and they both jerk their eyes to his suspicious face. “You can’t leave me listening to Captain Hughes _alone!”_

“Are you listening?” Captain Hughes says, dropping the letter from his face and looking at all of them with an anger that doesn’t reach his eyes. “This is important!”

“What else would we be doing?” Warrant Officer Brock says with an innocent tint to his voice that makes even the Major smile behind his hand.

The next day, Warrant Officer Brock dies on a mission.

But it _was_ a rest.

The Major kicks sand over the puddle of stomach acid and rationed water that she heaved at the sight of his body, and hands her a handkerchief. She wipes her mouth, and he gives her the last of his water to rinse out her mouth.

“Sorry,” she mutters.

“Don’t apologize, sergeant.” His voice is tight. “Don’t apologize for being horrified by death.”

The tangled knot of memories is hopeless now, and she gives up trying to keep her distance. She sags against him as they walk alone back to camp, and he doesn’t push her away.

The next day they run supplies again, and Captain Hughes is still talking about Gracia. Riza listens harder this time, trying to absorb some of his enthusiasm to soften the edge of bitter grief. She hadn’t even known Brock that well, but that doesn’t really make it easier.

* * *

After two years, Riza learns what she can lock away and what she can’t. She learns how to let off just enough pressure to keep herself sane without turning into a shaking mess.

The Major is always there to drag her out when she misjudges how much she can take. When her teeth start chattering and she can’t think about anything about how they’re going to die they’re _all going to die_ and she’s never going to pay off her father’s debt and she’s never going to _be_ anything to _anyone_ except her father who’s _dead—_

_Follow my breaths, sergeant. Focus on the breaths._

And she’s there to drag him out when he’s just staring at his ignition glove with a blank sort of horror on his face, his breathing too fast to give him any oxygen. She doesn’t know what goes through his head; she doesn’t ask. He never asks her either. He can see the panic in her eyes like she can see the panic in his.

_Follow my breaths, major. You need to breathe._

They both get better in time. Riza can sense her limits better the more they are tried. She locks more thoughts away, begs them to wait until she’s safe. She imagines the Major must do the same.

But she doesn’t know how long the thoughts will wait. The idea that they will come for her in the middle of a battle scares her badly enough that she almost takes the dishonorable discharge to go — not home, but _somewhere._

If she did that, though, she would be leaving the Major. He’s not leaving. And while once that wouldn’t matter, she knows that she can’t leave him now. The walks at midnight are nothing compared with mingled breaths staving off the inevitable crush of panic. Nothing compared with him yanking her behind him before he burns through the people about to attack them. Nothing compared with her shooting an enemy down _seconds_ before they kill the biggest target on their team: the state alchemist standing in the middle of the abandoned street.

The Major is tangled up in her bones, and she can’t leave him without leaving herself behind.

So she stays.

And she doesn’t think about why. Not really. She locks that away too, because what’s one more?

Something long dead shakes off the dust, and she ignores it.

* * *

Three years since the order is issued, and the date passes with no fanfare. No one even comments on it, but Riza thinks she can see the weight in everyone’s face.

Three years since Riza’s deployment comes a few weeks later; she manages to smile at the right corporal to exchange her next two supply runs for a bottle of alcohol that tastes like it was made in a toilet.

But there aren’t any toilets on the front lines, which just makes it all the more disturbing.

“Care to share, sergeant?”

“Master sergeant,” she corrects dully, her head already starting to swim. “But I guess you still say ‘sergeant,’ don’t you?”

“Promotion?”

He sits down beside her, his uniform jacket unbuttoned and the white duster they’re all given laying across his lap. She thinks she’s only seen his jacket unbuttoned a handful of times in the past three years, and it seems strangely intimate.

Even though people are walking all around them, talking loudly and laughing.

Even though his blood has been on her hands, even though he’s tangled his fingers in hers to make sure she doesn’t get lost in the haze of a hasty retreat.

She needs to stop drinking this not-toilet-moonshine.

She brings the flask to her mouth and takes another gulp.

“If you want to call it that,” she says. The alcohol is blurring her consonants, but she doesn’t care.

“None for me,” he says, and she sees his head tipping back out of the corner of her eye. “Rumor has it they’ll promote me to Lieutenant Colonel if I can make it out of here alive.”

She takes another drink.

“You will.”

“You’ve pushed me out of enough gunfire to know that’s not a guarantee, sergeant.”

“You’ll burn anyone to a crisp if they get too close.”

She almost regrets the words, but the ironic puff of laughter follows too closely for her to overthink it.

“I’m going to need some of whatever you’re drinking if you’re going to talk like that.”

The words sound familiar in a way she can’t recall, but she holds out the flask. He reaches for the metal container, and she realizes why it sounded familiar. It sounded like the flirting he did so long ago _so long ago_ when he played his part and she played hers. The niggling thing she has been trying to ignore lifts a sleepy head. She’s too tired and there’s too much alcohol in her system to push it away, so she _feels_ the slip of his skin as his fingers run over hers, tightening on the flask and pulling it toward his mouth. She watches as he tips it back and his lips touch the place where hers had been moments ago.

Hot shame, the flush of desire.

She swallows it down, remembering why she pushes that thing down, and down, and down.

 _“This isn’t — it can’t be what you want it to be.”_ The memory of his voice should jerk her back into herself, but it doesn’t.

His adam’s apple bobs as he swallows; she tries to close her eyes but they don’t listen.

The horror, the whispering thoughts of nihilism — they are a steady weight that she keeps locked away.

But this. _This._ This is a bullet fired from a gun she knew was there but never saw. It rips through her and derails any other thoughts even as she scrambles for a foothold. The firelight dancing on his skin. The tendons of his fingers as they wrap around the bottle. The way he sucks on his top lip after he drinks something.

This will kill her, and she will thank it as she dies.

“That’s awful,” he says, wincing as he lowers the flask from his mouth after what feels like a thousand years. And she laughs. It’s not a real laugh. It sounds strangled and choking.

“It is,” she says, reaching out a hand for the flask. He curls it into his chest protectively, and her eyes move to his for an explanation.

“I think you’ve had enough,” he says seriously, but his eyes spark with firelight and laughter.

“It’s mine!” she says, and she knows she sounds petulant, but she can’t stop herself.

“What’s the occasion?” he asks, lifting a shoulder to block her way in case she tries to grab it back. “It’s not your birthday.”

The fact that he remembers her birthday, or at the very least remembers her _not_ birthday, makes it hard for her to breathe for a moment. She wonders, with a stab of fear that’s softened by warm fuzz, how strong that alcohol actually is.

“Deployment anniversary,” she says, holding out her hand again. “Three years.”

He swears under his breath and hands over the alcohol. She takes another swig, deciding she doesn’t care how strong it is. She has to finish it tonight, anyway, since the flask will need to be filled with water in the morning.

“Mine was a month ago.”

She hums some sort of acknowledgment. The timing makes sense, probably, if she did the math from her father’s funeral. But numbers swim in her mind, so she gives up.

“I thought we would be home by now,” she says, holding the neck of the flask between two fingers and rocking it back and forth. The burnished aluminum catches the orange light in a way that entrances her until the Major’s hand appears again and grabs it. “Hey!”

“Me too,” he says, as if she hadn’t protested.

Through a gargantuan force of will, she keeps her eyes trained on the ground. She hears him swallow and pulls in a breath through her nose, letting it out through her mouth. She needs to stop drinking.

He nudges her knuckles with the flask and she takes it back, tipping it back for another gulp immediately. The wash of alcohol almost knocks away the feeling of his fingers brushing hers.

“What are you going to do when you get out?” she asks.

“Get a promotion and a desk job,” he says without hesitation, and she thinks she hears his words tumbling into one another too. It makes her smile a little in vindication. This stuff _is_ strong.

“No, I mean _besides_ your job,” she says, lifting her eyes to his with a grin and a shake of his head. “You really do think about work all the time, don’t you?”

“I guess I’ll see my aunt,” he says, seeming disinterested. He looks at her, then looks at the fire and shrugs. “My job is more important.”

“Than your family?” she says, and she can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. She doesn’t _have_ a family, and he just shrugs his away like they don’t _matter._

The Major stiffens, and he looks back at her. She can see his eyes jump as he focuses on her left eye, then her right. His mouth is a straight line, but not hard. Thinking.

“I definitely need more of _that_ if I’m going to talk about Madame Christmas,” he says, flicking the aluminum as he apparently comes to a decision.

She surrenders it readily. She already knows there’s no way she’s finishing it herself unless she wants to spend most of the next morning vomiting.

Her eyes follow as the Major tips it back and takes two big swallows. A drop of clear liquid curves out of the corner of his mouth and down to his chin.

“Hey!” she says, covering up the rush of her heart and stutter of her breath with annoyance. “Don’t waste it!”

He levels her with an annoyed look, then curls out his tongue to lick it away.

“Happy?”

_That’s a word for it._

She really needs to stop drinking.

“Give that back,” she says, tugging it from his grasp. “You don’t appreciate it.”

“It tastes like it was made in a toilet,” he says, and she splutters on the drink she was taking. That makes him laugh, even as he schools his tone into mock-severity. “Now who’s wasting it?”

“I thought you were talking about your aunt?” Riza says, trying to deflect from the fact that she’s mopping not-toilet-moonshine off her mouth with her sleeve.

“My parents died when I was young,” he says instead, and what was left of the grin fades from her face. She had assumed, since he had never once mentioned his parents in all their discussions, but it’s still different to hear it.

He’s an orphan, too.

“Madame Christmas is my father’s younger sister,” he continues when she doesn’t reply. “They didn’t really keep in touch. She didn’t know I existed, actually, until I was dropped on her doorstep.”

“Oh,” Riza says, blinking. She doesn’t have any aunts or uncles, but she had always presumed that brothers and sisters … stayed in contact with one another.

“She’s a good woman,” the Major says, which Riza thinks is a strange thing to say about your aunt.

The Major folds his hands and props his chin on them as he leans forward. His elbows rest on his knees, and he’s looking at the campfire in front of them. The orange light licks across his face as the silver light from the moon caresses the back of his head.

She wonders what his hair feels like.

A burst of adrenaline floods her bloodstream, and her heart launches into a panicked rhythm as she clutches the flask tighter. Blinking furiously, she pries her gaze from the Major and affixes it to the crackling fire too. Nails it there and uses the adrenaline to batter it into submission.

“She realized I had an aptitude for alchemy,” the Major says, his voice distant.

He brushes a finger over his chin absently. She can see it out of the corner of her eye. Only her curiosity about this section of his past that he’s never talked about keeps her listening and focused. She has a feeling he won’t talk about it again, when he’s no longer under the grip of alcohol and the creeping phantom of imminent death.

“She sent me to a few places before settling on your father.”

“What does she _do?”_ Riza asks before she can stop herself. Alchemical training is expensive. One student’s salary was enough to keep them afloat; she can’t imagine what jobs could spare that kind of money for _tuition_.

The major grabs the flask from her wordlessly, taking another drink and handing it back before answering.

“She runs — uh.” He runs a hand through his hair, looking at her for a moment before looking back to the fire.

Riza takes another drink without thinking about it, mostly focused on this intriguing display. The curiosity had managed to beat out the adrenaline in her bloodstream. The Major is not often discomfited. His mouth twists as he thinks about what to say, and Riza tells herself she _must_ look away. She doesn’t. She watches as his lips part, and press together.

“Black market art pieces? Illegal drug cartel?” she guesses, unable to keep the grin from her face at the major’s obvious discomfort and telling herself that her heart is just rushing in curious amusement.

“She runs a bar,” the major says, and Riza sinks back in disappointment.

“That’s not—“

“Mostly staffed by women.” A pause. “Entirely staffed by women.”

It takes Riza too long to realize what he’s implying. The combination of the alcohol and the wrinkle between his eyebrows when he’s trying not to say something wreaks havoc on her processing abilities.

“Your aunt owns a _brothel?”_ Riza says in a whisper that she knows is way too loud.

The major looks over her shoulder, but no one is anywhere nearby.

“Y…es,” he says slowly. “And no.”

“What does that _mean?”_ she presses, extremely interested in this information and wondering how she didn’t know it already.

“That’s the end of this conversation,” the major says decidedly, plucking the flask from her hands again.

“You can’t stop when you get to the good part,” she complains, tugging it back as soon as he swallows. As soon as his adam’s apple bobs again, and he wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his uniform before she can scold him again.

“It’s a long story,” he says, “and this is hardly the place.”

“At least that explains the flirting,” she mutters into the mouth of the flask that smells a little bit like him now, around the edges.

“What?” he cuts her a look.

She opens her eyes wide and swallows the last of the moonshine.

“Hm?”

He shakes his head, but she can see a smile in his eyes that he’s trying to keep away from his mouth.

She has _got_ to stop looking at his mouth.

“Congratulations for making it three years, master sergeant.”

“Cheers,” she says, holding up the empty flask — a toast to no one.

He raps his knuckles against it, his shoulder bumping into hers with the action. He doesn’t move away. Neither does she.

* * *

Almost four years passes before the end of the war is declared.

They’re on the way back from a mission when they get the news, shouted from a transport buggy bumping down the rocky, ruined street and already full to bursting with at least two other teams on their way back to base camp.

Something in Riza clicks as the whooping cheers fade from hearing while she and the Major keep trudging. Something she hadn’t allowed herself to think while the war was continuing.

Every day, she watched her father’s monster live through the snap of the Major’s fingers. Ink drawings brought to life even worse than she could have imagined, spinning out from imagination to reality and back again with the foreboding undercurrent of _what if_. It was too easy to imagine what this power would be like multiplied, but she didn’t let herself. She locked it away.

Now that it’s over, now that it’s done, that thought is the first to break the lock.

She can’t let it happen. She _won’t._

One conversation with the major, and he agrees. Easier than she thought he would, though it makes sense. She’s had to _watch_ the hellish destruction; he’s had to make it happen.

Surely he doesn’t want anyone else to bear that weight, either.

They are too far from base camp to make it back that day, so they camp alone. Alone because the other two people on their team died on mission. They _died_ on a mission that was completed possibly _after_ the war had been declared over. They died not knowing how close they were to freedom.

 _Soon, soon,_ she promises the thought as she locks it away. _Almost, but not yet._

That night, she sets up her tent while the Major gathers the dried chips from the local wandering hoof-beasts they will use to start a fire. Her tent is small, as they all are, but it’s hers. A space that’s been hers for the last four years in a way no space ever has been.

It’s fitting, maybe, that it’s so temporary, but she doesn’t dwell on that. _Soon, soon._

She fits the poles together, tightens the straps. Unrolls the pallet. She wonders how many more times she will do this before she’s on a train heading— somewhere.

By the time she finishes, the Major has already gotten the small fire smoldering, and the dented kettle hangs over it. During the day, the idea of tea with dinner always makes her break out in a fresh sweat, even though she _knows_ the temperature drops rapidly once the sun goes down. Four years of experience don’t make the extreme temperatures any more bearable. She is always happy to curl her fingers around the effervescent warmth of the tin mug at twilight, sipping the hot liquid even though it burns her tongue.

“We have a day before we’re expected back at base camp,” the Major says.

He doesn’t seem to expect an answer, so she doesn’t give one. She knows that. He knows she knows that. Why is he—

“I can’t — destroy it all at once,” he says. “But I think I can get the most important part.”

The pause feels like an eternity to her, though she thinks it would be barely noticeable to other people. She hears the other soldiers talk about the Major, about how he’s all bravado and stoic confidence, how he never hesitates to do what he needs to do. They must not hear the pauses between the words, see the momentary blinks of unmoving as he switches from one course of action to another.

They must not realize that he is constantly fighting himself: a battle between what is Right and what he Must Do.

She hears the battle now, can see flickers of it in his eyes as he looks at the horizon. Scanning for Ishvalans, always, even though the war is over. She wonders if he will ever stop scanning the horizon.

She wonders if she will, either. _Soon, soon._

He brings his steaming mug to his mouth for a drink.

“No,” she agrees. “It will take too long to heal.”

There it is, a barely-perceptible arrest of motion. The mug pauses at his lips, then he drinks.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asks, his voice low and quiet and so close to something real. It carries the echo of moonlight, of lives long forgotten. She’s heard every shade of his voice in the past four years, and this one is rare. Unguarded, almost.

“Yes,” she says, trying to sound braver than she is.

He stands up abruptly, setting his food and mug on the ground with more haste than care. The tea almost sloshes out, a near miss of wasting the precious resource of water. Riza’s eyes are fixed on it as the liquid settles, distracting her from the surprise of the Major’s sudden movement.

“What—“

“We’ll do it now,” he interrupts, his face inscrutable. His face is half-turned to the horizon, and the other half is walled in stone. Every trace of moonlight siphoned away.

“Should you set up your tent first, sir?” she asks.

 _“Now,”_ he says, turning to look at her. The darkness in his eyes bolsters the emphasis in his voice, and Riza sees the soldier no one can deny. In spite of herself, her heartbeat accelerates. That tone usually means danger, and her body seems to know it. She doesn’t bother trying to convince it otherwise.

“Yes, sir,” she says, putting her own empty mug and plate into her bag.

“Your tent,” he says. “You’ll want to lay down afterwards.”

“Yes, sir,” she says. _I know,_ she wants to add, but doesn’t. She doesn’t want to push him. She doesn’t want to get into an argument that would delay this by even a moment.

“Call when you’re ready,” he says. “I’ll be just outside the door.”

* * *

She takes off her uniform, folding the uncompromising blues into neat packages on the ground. Then, after only a moment’s hesitation, she strips to the waist. The cold air hits her tacky skin, the residue of sweat and grooves of dusty grime, and makes her shiver. She balls up her grungy undershirts in front of her chest as much for a semblance of warmth as a semblance of modesty. Not like he hasn’t already seen her like this before, but that was once. And it was a lifetime ago.

She settles into a seated position next to her pallet and takes a steadying breath — _you don’t own me_ — before calling him.

The Major comes in at once, almost before his rank clips off her teeth.

Two makes the tent feel close, crowded. Her space, her only space, shrunken down to almost stifling in spite of the chill.

She can sense that pause again, barely there. Just the barest moment of indecision as he sees her. She wonders why: which of a million reasons it might be.

“It’s bigger than I remember,” he says, and his voice sounds strange in a way she can’t bring herself to touch. _Soon, soon._

For the first time since she decided this, she feels like she might lose her nerve. 

The scrolling runes roll from shoulder to shoulder, from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. The canvas of her father’s life work is inked across every inch of her back. She can remember every session. Every breakthrough her father had had meant preparing herself for another painstaking ordeal. Another three inches. Another six.

She feels the air warm against her shoulder blade, just her shoulder blade, and half turns as her pulse quickens. His fingers are pulling away, as if he had been about to touch her. It stirs something in her. Something that she’s buried time and time again under a stuttering but perfectly clear rejection delivered years ago. His face is set, now, as her eyes flick up to it. It throws more dirt on this wriggling thing that refuses to die.

He doesn’t ask her again if she’s sure, and Riza is glad because she’s not sure she’s brave enough to say yes anymore.

“Bite down on this,” he says instead, handing out a strip of leather.

She takes it wordlessly and slips it between her teeth.

Another instant, and she might beg him to stop. Another instant, and she might be that pale, meek girl with the long hair.

He doesn’t make her wait that instant.

His fingers snap, almost softly. Just enough to spark the ignition and no more, though she forgets that fact in the terrible pain that rips through her right shoulder.

Blinding white, the fire pulls the oxygen from the room and pours into every nerve ending. She knows her whole body is not covered in flame but it _feels_ like it is. It feels like she’s dying, and all she can think of is how she’s going to throw up. Her stomach rolls as much from the pain as from the hideously familiar smell of fire meeting flesh.She wonders why death always makes her want to throw up, and if that’s a sign that she really _is_ dying. 

Just when she thinks she can bear no more, the heat is gone.

She doesn’t realize how close she had come to passing out until she feels the Major’s hand on her left shoulder from a thousand miles away. It’s warm, sweaty — or maybe it’s just the sweat on her skin already. Fine grit turns to mud between their skin, a familiar sandpaper that feels like the brush of feathers in comparison to the bubbling heat of her other shoulder.

“Deep breaths,” he says, his voice barely audible over the echoing screams of pain in her ears.

She does what he says, the pain ricocheting across her skin with every inhale. She tries to move only her chest, but the skin on her back still shifts. The only thing keeping her from sobbing is the knowledge that that would make it _so much worse._

“I tried to keep it as localized as I could,” he says, and something about his voice sounds strange, but she can’t focus on it.

It hurts worse than any injury she’s had before. Worse than the knife that almost snapped a tendon. Worse than the infection that followed and left her shaking in a fever for days. Worse than the bullet that would have killed her if she hadn’t been six feet from a medic who could keep her from bleeding out.

“How much?” she gasps out, because that’s all her screaming brain can think. _Please, no more. Please, not again._

But she will do it again, if he didn’t get it all. Because this hell of charred flesh is nowhere near punishment enough for the destruction she can see in her mind’s eye if anyone else learned this. She will do this a hundred times over, and hope it atones for _anything_ she’s done.

“A quarter,” he says at once. “Maybe a little less. Enough that no one will be able to figure it out.”

“You’re sure?” _Please,_ her mind shrieks. _Please._

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she says, relaxing the last bit of tension as she realizes it’s over. It’s done. It’s not atonement, but it’s something. She wonders why she feels relief and guilt in the same wash, but pushes it away. _Soon, soon._

“Okay,” he says, his voice still strange but circling back to normal. “Hold still. This will hurt.”

She barely registers his hand leaving her shoulder before she hears the lid of a jar unscrewing. She puts the leather between her teeth again an instant before the pain screams across her skin once more. She knows he must be putting ointment on the burn, but she can hardly distinguish his touch from the feeling that her shoulder must be breaking open.

The image of a hoof-beast roasting on the fire, skin cracked open and cooked flesh gaping to white bone. Her stomach heaves involuntarily and everything turns white once more when the action moves her shoulder.

“You’re alright, sergeant,” he says, his hand back on her shoulder and his voice strange once more. “Breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.”

She follows his instructions, though her breath hitches on the tears she can’t stop anymore. Every hitch makes her shoulder burn with a blinding pain, and she wonders if this is how all the Ishvalans felt as they died. If their pain was this, multiplied by a hundred. A thousand.

She can’t say any of that aloud, not when the Major’s voice sounds like that and she thinks his hand is shaking a little on her shoulder. She won’t say it, and thinking it only makes her cry more.

 _Soon, soon,_ she promises desperately, trying to shove it away. _Almost, but not yet._

Riza blinks, and the Major is in front of her. He must have moved, but she didn’t notice it at all. How could she not have noticed?

“You passed out for a moment,” he says as she looks up at him. The lines in his face are deep, showing every hour of sleep lost in this war that isn’t a war. “Almost — made it worse. I moved to keep you upright until you regained consciousness.”

The pause is so much worse when she can see it as well as hear it.

“You should lay down, in case you pass out again,” he says, and she just nods.

He helps her slide down to lay on her stomach, holding her at awkward angles when she can’t bear to move the skin even an inch further. He holds the bulk of her weight, reminding her to breathe, until she’s settled into something as close to comfortable as she will get.

“Your father was right about one thing at least,” he says when she can finally close her eyes. “Pain means healing.”

He had maneuvered her shoulder so it was not resting on anything yet, muttering something about a bandage. He presses gauze onto the burn, then wraps it around her shoulder and chest with the rapid efficiency of someone who has bundled up his fair share of battlefield wounds. She flickers in and out of consciousness to the steady hands and flashes of white, then suddenly he’s done. His hand rests on the gauze; she can feel it even if she can’t see him.

“Are you angry?” she asks, because she isn’t looking at him and she won’t have to see it.

“No,” he says without hesitation.

“Why?”

“Because you’re free.”

She thinks of the debt, the climbing interest that her meager salary can’t ever seem to get on top of, and wonders if she’ll ever be free. _Soon, soon._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you are enjoying! Reviews are always appreciated. <3


	5. Part 3 - Chapter 5

— **1920 —**

“I thought Grummand was going to climb into my pants and follow us to lunch,” Roy grouses as they stride away from the nursing home. “He thinks just because I’m _blind_ I won’t notice that he follows right behind me and sweet-talks everyone the moment I’m done having a conversation. I didn’t lose my _hearing.”_

Traffic is heavy on this side of town — the familiar _whirr_ and _whoosh_ of automobiles, the petroleum-tinted breeze that follows a moment after. It feels good to walk with purposeful strides after maneuvering carefully around a room full of people he could break with an embarrassing fall. Especially since several of the residents were sneaking Hayate treats; Roy was _certain_ of it. It was the only explanation for why the normally attentive dog kept leading him back to the same people by way of chair legs and support columns.

“I thought you said Grummand underestimating you was an advantage,” Fuery says.

“It’s an _irritating_ advantage.”

 _“He’s not really underestimating you,”_ Hawkeye had said. _“He’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”_

He blows out a breath and tries to center himself. He hadn’t been expecting Grummand at the nursing home, and it had thrown him off more than he had liked. He feels unbalanced.

_Unbalanced._

Hawkeye’s soft tone from the night before comes to mind unbidden. The moment before she had finished her statement, when only unrealized possibility had hung in the air, something had shifted.

When Berthold had started teaching him how to shape fire, he had said that every shape began with the same transmutation circle: the circle that captured a flame in the moment of its inception and held it. Otherwise, he would be limited to using alchemy within range of an existing source of flame and fuel. That one circle opened the door to every other, but in itself it did nothing of consequence. It only created possibility.

 _“No matter what happens tomorrow…”_ A flame, captured in the instant it came to life. Preserved and waiting for one of a thousand possibilities.

 _The election is making me sentimental,_ he thinks, smiling and lifting a hand when someone calls out his name.

“Vote Mustang!” Fuery shouts back.

“We will!” says whoever-it-is.

“That was Ingrid and Davis Thatch,” Fuery says after a few seconds — presumably after they are out of earshot.

“Ah,” Roy says, placing them in his memory. Owners of the bakery on the other side of town. Grummand’s favorite bakery, he remembers with a smug smile.

Fuery is always diligent about identifying people for Roy, which he appreciates. Most of his team doesn’t think about it. Roy has gotten good at identifying people by voice in the past five years, but he doesn’t mind being saved the mental gymnastics.

“Here’s the man of the hour! Amestris’ next fuhrer!” says a loud voice he recognizes as a waiter at _Cassetoni’s Best_. He hadn’t realized they’d already made it to the restaurant. They must have been walking faster than he’d thought. “We have the back room all set up for you, sir.”

“You didn’t need to do that, Watts,” Roy says with a smile. “I only made a reservation for my team.”

“When Cassetoni heard it was you, he almost bent my ear off shouting about why you didn’t have the private room,” Watts says.

“Ah,” Roy winces sympathetically, tugging Hayate to a stop when he approximates that he’s a respectable distance from the man. “I should have guessed that might happen. Cassetoni is here?”

“With his camera,” Watts confirms.

“At least this is my good side. Go ahead, Fuery,” he adds. “There’s no reason for you to get caught up in this. I’m sure you’re starving.”

“Thank you, sir,” Fuery says, the gratitude evident in his voice. The door opens and closes, letting out the excited hum of the lunchtime crowd. Mingling voices and clinking dishware escape for a few seconds before the door closes again, leaving him with only Watts and the passing cars.

“He’s just inside the door,” Watts says before adding something that would seem like a subject change to anyone else. “Angelica is serving your table.”

_Again._

“Did you—“

“I tried to tell him, sir,” Watts apologizes.

“Good man, Watts. I appreciate the effort,” Roy sighs.

The man is incorrigible. He supposes it’s a sign that they’ve managed to effectively dismantle his playboy image if an extremely protective father was trying to set him up with his daughter at every opportunity. But it seems like a small victory sometimes, when the awkwardness in the air becomes palpable.

“He’s a brick wall, sir, if you get my meaning,” Watts says.

Roy makes a noncommittal noise, hearing the hubbub rise and subside as someone leaves the restaurant.

“Angelica is looking very pretty today, I’m supposed to inform you.”

“Consider me informed,” Roy says drily.

“Very good, sir.”

Watts leads him into the restaurant, and what had been a comforting cacophony of noise is deafening for a moment until his ears adjust. The restaurant is always busy at lunchtime, being so close to Central Command, which is why Roy had made sure to call ahead for a reservation. Threading through the crowded dining area is perilous, especially with people calling out his name and the owner stopping him to take photos.

But, it’s all worth it when he reaches the private room and hears a chorus of voices more familiar than any in the main dining room. Despite his initial thoughts about not needing the private room, he finds himself silently thanking Cassetoni. It’s nice to shut everyone out for a moment and just breathe in a room full of the people he cares most about. It centers him in a way he can’t achieve on his own, reminding him of his dream. His plan. Still childish, perhaps, but almost coming true.

These are the people he loves; Fuery discussing a last minute schedule change with Falman, Havoc flirting shamelessly with Angelica, Hawkeye laughing as she tries to order appetizers for the table, Breda trying to double all the appetizers without Hawkeye noticing.

Only Hughes is missing, an ache that time has turned from something sharp to something deep and sprawling. He can think of his friend now without a ripping pain that threatens to bleed out anger and darkness, but there is still pain. It spreads through his bones and makes him take a deeper breath as he pauses at the door. Imagining for a moment that he is here, as he should be.

“Come sit down and order something before Breda does it for you!” Havoc calls, and Roy chuckles before joining the table.


	6. Part 3 - Chapter 6

— **1915 —**

Everything is chaos after the battle that nearly ripped the world in half. Riza feels like she’s still catching up on what _exactly_ happened, but she supposes that’s the downside of just being a person with a gun and not a person with world-altering alchemical abilities.

The _upside_ of just being a person with a gun is that she’s not pulled into huddled meetings and questioned incessantly. She’ll have to give a report of everything she did in the past few days, but that’s nothing she isn’t used to.

She just hopes that whoever is taking the report can retroactively pardon the light treason, even if she ends up with a dishonorable discharge for it.

Her mouth twists as she remembers so long ago, remembers when a dishonorable discharge was the worst possible thing that could have happened to her. Worse, even, than death on the unforgiving sands of Ishval. Six years feels like a lifetime ago.

“You need to go to the hospital, sir,” she says in an undertone, watching Alphonse talk to Hohenheim. Alphonse, in his actual body. It’s going to take some time to get used to that.

“I was going to say the same thing,” the Colonel says, his head turning toward her, eyes flat and unseeing.

It’s going to take some time to get used to _that_ , too. But she’s not going to think about that now. _Soon, soon,_ she promises herself, a familiar refrain. Her therapist is going to have a heyday with this one. Riza has been dodging her since everything started getting … questionably legal.

“I know I need to go to the hospital,” she says, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “I almost died.”

She says it flippantly, but she can almost _feel_ the Colonel tense beside her, even though they aren’t touching.

“I know.”

“Don’t do that,” she says warningly.

“I should have—“

“No,” she interrupts firmly. “There was nothing you could have done that you didn’t do. _Nothing_ , sir.”

“I—“

“The only reason I haven’t shot you already is because I’m at least 90% sure that you didn’t do human transmutation on purpose.”

“I didn’t!” he says, the alarm cutting off whatever brooding he was in the middle of doing, which was exactly her point. “I don’t know how they did it, but they forced me to do it somehow.”

“Good,” she says with a nod, trying to stifle a victorious smile at how easily she distracted him. “That’s what it looked like.”

“We aren’t done talking about this,” he says after a moment. “I know when you’re trying to distract me.”

“When I _am_ distracting you,” she corrects.

Now it’s his turn to fight a smile.

* * *

“His sight isn’t going to come back,” Riza says to the palm of her hand as she rubs at the headache that hasn’t lifted since the battle. _“Blood loss,”_ the doctor keeps reassuring her as he gives her more green pills to replenish the iron, but she thinks it’s more than blood loss.

“How do you feel about that?” Halia asks in a studied neutral that always puts Riza at ease.

“Bad,” Riza replies immediately, then puffs out a laugh that isn’t a laugh. “Obviously, I feel bad about that.”

“You seem very concerned about him,” Halia observes.

“It’s my job,” Riza says automatically.

_“And what would you do after you shot me, Lieutenant?”_

_“I don’t plan on staying in this world much longer.”_

“Your job doesn’t require you to _feel_ concerned,” Halia points out. “Just to protect him and follow his orders.”

“We’ve known each other long enough,” Riza says, leaning forward on the desk. “You know that. Of course I’m concerned.”

“It feels like you’re deflecting,” Halia says, but gently. “You know everything we discuss is confidential.”

 _And I know that everyone has a price,_ Riza thinks. She had already avoided military therapists to hopefully avoid any whispers traveling through the ranks, but she doesn’t have any illusions that a civilian one wouldn’t talk with the right motivation. She doesn’t care if her own personal information gets leaked, not really. Her career doesn’t hinge on public opinion, and she doubts that anyone cares about the common angst of a traumatized orphan soldier.

But she doesn’t even breathe anything connected to the Colonel except the most basic facts. His career _does_ hinge on public opinion. Or, at least, he wants it to.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” she says firmly, and Halia drops it, like she always does.

“What do you want to talk about?” Halia asks, graciously not pointing out the fact that Riza had brought it up in the first place.

_I need to know how to help him. I need to know how to make this easier for him. I need to know how to keep him from getting lost in his own head._

“I almost died,” she says instead. “Only some lucky alchemy — alkahestry — saved me. It brought a lot back.”

“From the Ishvalan War?” Halia asks.

“Yes,” Riza says, settling into the half-story and hoping to pull some peace out of it even though she can’t talk about the worst of it.

The look in his eyes when he watched her bleeding out.

That the biggest regret she had in that moment was that she would never know what his breath tasted like in the moments after a kiss, and how she hated herself for being so pathetic.

The fact that, as her life thudded out of her with every weakening heartbeat, all she could really think about was how glad she was that he was there and she wouldn’t be going alone.

She can talk about the basics, and Halia can give her some pointers to keep her from spiraling on the job. She can discuss the panic-driven nightmares that had started recurring with more frequency, and process some of the raw emotions of survival that keep her heart in her throat.

She can move forward, at least partially. And maybe then, she will have the room to think about the rest.

 _Soon, soon,_ she promises the images of the Colonel holding onto Izumi, asking her if she could fight before she had even realized what had happened to him. _Soon, soon,_ she promises the thoughts of how close he had come to dying when she was powerless to stop it. _Soon, soon,_ she promises the feel of his hand on her elbow as she guides him through streets he used to stride through with breezy confidence.

_Soon._

* * *

Riza wakes up with a start, reaching for the gun she keeps under the mattress before she’s even fully awake. Adrenaline floods her bloodstream like an old friend, rippling through her muscles and whispering to her bones.

By the time she blinks, her gun is trained on the door and her breathing is even. She can see Hayate in her periphery, awake and also staring at the door. He whines softly, looking at her, but he’s not agitated. Not like he would be if there was an intruder.

“Good boy,” she says, switching to a one-handed hold on the weapon and running a hand from his ears to his collar.

He stands on the bed and shakes, the metal tags on his collar jangling loudly before he jumps to the floor and trots to the door.

“I hope you didn’t wake me up just to go outside,” Riza warns, pushing the sheets off her lap and swinging her feet to the ground.

She gives him a look, but he’s sniffing the crack under the door and whining again. Softly. Like he does when the Colonel—

She hears a thump from the master bedroom, and she’s on her feet in a moment. After three seconds of deliberation—

_One: What if there’s an intruder?_

_Two: Hayate would not be so calm if he didn’t recognize the smell._

_Three: Mustang isn’t a threat._

—she tucks the gun under the mattress again before padding to the door.

“Heel, Hayate,” she says sternly as she opens the door.

Hayate stays at her feet, though he stretches his nose toward the master bedroom as far as it will go. The master bedroom is only a few steps from the spare bedroom that she slept in when she stayed here. She had kept an eye on the apartment while Mustang was in the hospital, and since his return she had only stayed a handful of times.

 _“Do you have anyone at home to help you adjust?”_ the doctor had asked, looking over his spectacles.

 _“Yes,”_ Riza had answered without even looking at the Colonel. _“I’m staying there until he’s ready to be on his own.”_

_“Very good.”_

_“You don’t need to—“_

_“Come on, Colonel,”_ Ed’s drawling voice from Alphonse’s side a few beds down. _“Don’t be an idiot_ now. _The last thing anyone needs is for you to die tripping over your dresser.”_

 _“Ed!”_ Winry, scandalized.

 _“What?! He’s_ blind _Winry!”_

 _“I_ know _that! You’re so — ugh! You’re so_ rude, _Ed!”_

 _“_ I’m _rude? Have you even—“_

The bickering had faded to the background as Mustang had just sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

_“Just until I can get around on my own.”_

_“Of course, sir.”_

Riza hadn’t brought much over. Just enough to be comfortable when she actually slept there instead of trekking across the city to her own apartment after making sure he was in bed alright.

The room isn’t hers. It’s a spare room that used to be a study. The desk had been moved to the corner, and the bed was old — clearly leftover from whenever the Colonel had bought himself a bigger one. She wonders sometimes why he didn’t get rid of it, but just shakes her head. It’s not worth bringing up and hearing the certainly expansive reasoning.

“Sir?” she says now, knocking on the bedroom door she had closed behind herself several hours ago.

Hayate buries his nose under the door and sniffs so deeply that he sneezes. If she had been less on edge, she probably would have rolled her eyes, but as it is she just pushes the door open.

“I’m coming in, Colonel,” she says as the door swings open. “Stay, Hayate.”

The lamp at his bedside is still on. He had said that he would turn it off after she left, but he must have forgotten. It casts the room in stark contrast between weak light and deep shadow.

Riza can see immediately that Mustang is still asleep, the sheets tangled around his feet and hair sticking to his forehead with sweat. There’s a deep furrow in his brow, and his mouth moves with words that make no sound. His body jerks, rocking the bed and causing the headboard to _thump_ against the wall. That must have been the sound she heard.

She walks around the bed.

“Colonel,” she says as she approaches.

She stays out of arm’s reach in case he wakes up violently. With a dream like this, it’s hard to know. More than once, she’d woken up with such a strong sense of danger that she’d almost shot a hole in her wall. Mustang doesn’t have his ignition gloves, but he’s no slouch in hand-to-hand. She doesn’t exactly fancy getting a punch to the face if she can avoid it.

“Colonel,” she says again when he doesn’t react, as loudly as she dares. Mustang has one neighbor with nothing better to do than report noise infractions, and she doesn’t feel like dealing with the paperwork.

He jerks again, looking more agitated. He’s mumbling incoherently, his head snapping back and forth.

“Mustang!” she says, drawing cautiously closer and steeling herself for contact. Steeling herself to fend off an adrenaline-fueled attack.

He’s more agitated, and she realizes his breaths are coming in quick puffs. Hyperventilating.

“Colonel!” she says, and just as she reaches for him, his eyes fly open.

His right hand is curling into the shape that precedes death and destruction — if he had his gloves. _And, if it isn’t raining,_ she adds to herself, an attempt to make herself relax which only partially works.

His other hand is already pushing himself to sitting as he looks around wildly. His dark eyes flicker in the remembrance of sight, unfocused but trying, _trying._ It’s so familiar that it almost brings a lump to her throat before she shakes it off.

“It’s just a dream, Colonel,” she says, keeping her voice level. “Are you awake now?”

“Yes,” he says, but his voice sounds strange and choked.

“You need to breathe, sir.”

She keeps her voice calm. His hands are shaking, and his breaths are still too quick, too shallow.

His right hand flattens, through what looks like considerable effort on his part, but he’s still blinking and looking around. He fumbles for the lamp, and Riza steels herself once more. He doesn’t remember that he can’t see, and she’s going to have to watch him realize it all over again.

“It’s dark,” he says, and his voice is almost _helpless._ Then his eyebrows come together, and his hand stills on the body of the lamp without trying to find the switch. He remembers. The echo of pain in her chest isn’t as severe as it first was when he had said his condition was permanent — his voice a calm neutral, as it always was. It’s not as sharp now, but it still threatens to break her.

“I know,” she says, her voice as soft as she can make it without cracking. _“It will take time for him to adjust. Be patient and consistent,”_ Halia reminds her in her head. “It’s alright. You’re in your apartment. Hayate and I are both here. Nothing is wrong. I promise.”

She looks to the doorway, where Hayate is sitting and watching them both.

“Right,” he manages, huffing the word out on a breath that still hasn’t slowed.

“You’re hyperventilating, sir,” she says again.

“I’m not—“ he starts to argue, but runs out of air.

“Follow my breaths,” she says, an old exercise for them. It echoes of war, of battlefields and horrors that stole the air from their lungs and made them forget how to get it back.

But he shakes his head, lifting his eyes and looking sightlessly across the room.

“I can’t—“ he starts, but she’s already sitting down on the edge of the bed, reaching for the hand that he seems to have forgotten on the lamp.

He can’t see the lift of her shoulders, the visible evidence of breath, and she’s willing to bet that his blood is pounding too hard in his ears to hear it either.

But he can feel it.

She wraps her fingers around his before she can think and overthink, pulling his hand gently up and resting it on her shoulder. It’s heavy and warm; his thumb brushes her throat, which sends a zing of surprise through her skin. She grits her teeth against the restless stirring of something that should be long dead and settles her breath.

“Follow my breaths,” she repeats pulling in a breath that lifts his hand.

Hers still rests on top of his, keeping it firmly in place. She can feel the bones of his hand pressing against her collarbone, and it’s an odd sensation that she doesn’t dwell on. He’s still not breathing. His eyes are unfocused, and he looks pale.

“Mustang,” she snaps, and he sucks in a breath.

She quickly pulls in more air to match, then watches closely as he barely holds it in as long as she does. He tries to ration the air as it escapes, following the sink of his hand on her shoulder as she exhales also.

She regulates her breathing by a habit that’s as much instinct as learned at this point. It’s almost laughable how many problems are made easier with a few steady breaths in, and out.

“Good,” she murmurs. “Again. Don’t stop.”

They breathe. Her leading, him following. Oxygen slowly refilling his body as her shoulder’s rise and fall dictates.

“Better,” she says, when his breathing seems to be falling into a natural rhythm. “It was just a dream. Do you remember now, sir?”

Does he remember that he’s not at war? Does he remember that he’s blind? Does he remember that he’s safe?

“Yes,” he says, and she’s not sure what he’s referring to, but he’s talking at least. “Yes. I’m sorry, lieutenant.”

The apology takes her by surprise a little. Roy Mustang isn’t a man made for apologies.

“It’s perfectly alright, Colonel,” she says, hoping that her surprise didn’t make a pause that was too long. “You know it’s normal.” She blinks, and his apology makes her pause. Surely not, but — “This isn’t your first, is it? Since the war?” She has to ask. She can’t imagine it is, but he’s blinking and still shaking and looking _lost_ in a way that makes her think of moonlight and the warmth of his hand on her shoulder. She swallows the edge of something she doesn’t want to think about.

“No,” he says right away, dismissing that errant thought. But when he doesn’t continue, she pushes. Carefully. Trying to figure out why he looks like _that_ after something he should be well used to by now.

“Was it … worse than usual?”

“I normally turn on the lights,” he says, rubbing his eyes with a frown. His other hand falls from her shoulder. The perspiration from his hand has dampened the collar of her pajama shirt, and it feels clammy now against her skin. “Seeing makes — _made_ — it better.”

Riza doesn’t know what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t that. She’s quiet, trying to figure out what to say. Eventually, she realizes too much time has passed, so she settles on something neutral.

“Ah.”

“Don’t pity me,” he snaps immediately, then huffs out a frustrated breath.

She gets the impression that he would have said that no matter _what_ she had said.

“I’m not,” she says, her voice even. Her hand reaches for his again, almost without her permission, but he jerks back the moment her fingers graze his knuckles. She curls her fingers into her palm with a frown. They burn with shame born of stupidity, and she continues without comment. “Pitying a superior officer is probably grounds for disciplinary action.”

It’s a weak joke, and neither of them laugh. Something heavy sits between them, and Riza isn’t sure how to dispel it. She doesn’t know if it’s new, or old. There’s too much between them to sort through it all right now, so she just keeps talking.

“You need something else to ground you,” she says. “Looking around at your surroundings isn’t going to work anymore.”

“I know, lieutenant,” he grinds out. “That is obvious.”

The words are sharp, and click into a place that tells her she’s outstayed her usefulness. If he’s going to lash out, it’s not going to help either of them. She pulls in a sharp breath to keep herself from lashing back in return, and exhales slowly. _He’s tired. He’s still coming down from the dream,_ she reminds herself.

“I’m sorry,” he says again before she can stand up and make her exit. Her eyebrows draw together in confusion. Two apologies in the span of two minutes? “I’m — I don’t know — what I am.”

The words say nothing. Mean nothing. It’s not like him. He often speaks without thinking it through, but he always makes _sense._ She isn’t sure how to respond, and she sifts through her words carefully before deciding to match the vulnerability that’s palpable in the air. Apologies. Confused statement. _Helpless._

“It’s just me, sir,” she says quietly. “You don’t have to know. You’ll figure it out. You always figure it out.”

“What if I can’t, this time?” his voice is a whisper, and the question wrings something out inside of her.

“You can,” she says, and in spite of the squeezing in her soul, she can’t help a small smile. “You’re too stubborn not to.”

He pushes out an attempt at a laugh this time, and she does too.

“You should go,” he says, after a moment.

“Of course,” she says. Her muscles had been ready to stand a few minutes ago, and they respond immediately. “I apologize for coming in without—“

“No,” he cuts her off, raising a hand and easing it in her direction with some reserve.

It bumps into her stomach and he pulls back — probably unsure what he was touching. His hand hovers uncertainly between them, but she stops moving, which she imagines was the point.

“I don’t mean right now, lieutenant,” he continues. “I mean, in general. You and I both know that I’m not staying in the army like — this. You should go, request another post. There are plenty of—“

“Sir,” she says, and it’s her turn to cut him off. “With all due respect, that is not your decision.”

“I know it’s not,” he says, the heat coming back to his voice, which dredges up simmering frustration in her chest. “But I don’t want you staying here under some misplaced sense of obligation or pity—“

“I _don’t_ pity you,” she snaps, releasing some of the irritation, but immediately regrets it. Her hand reaches for his without thought, pressing it insistently. Hoping it takes the edge off. Then she lets it go. “And I know I’m not obligated. But I’m not going anywhere.”

“What are you going to do?” he asks, and his words are still sharp, still hot. “You’re wasting your abilities! This is the perfect time for you to get that promotion — a hero of Amestris. They’ll give you almost anything you ask for, and splash it on the front page while the country is still celebrating. Every day you spend _here_ is a day wasted.”

Each word he speaks adds to the mounting frustration, and she rubs the bridge of her nose. A habit she picked up from him, or him from her — it’s impossible to say at this point. She’s so annoyed with his cluelessness that it’s almost _funny._

“I don’t —“ she starts, then cuts herself off as she realizes she doesn’t know how she’s going to finish that sentence. Her throat makes an odd noise, like a growl cut through with a snort of laughter as irritation wars with amusement. When she speaks again, she’s composed. “Colonel. I don’t want a promotion. I like my position.”

“As a first lieutenant?” he says, frowning. “You’ve never turned down a promotion before. First Lieutenant isn’t exactly a retiring point.”

She sighs, trying not to smile. Of course he thinks of rank in terms of retirement benefits. She knows this about him, and yet she didn’t realize he thought everyone _else_ thought like that, too.

“What?” he snaps.

“I’m not leaving,” she says, deliberately not answering the question. It’s too late in the night to have an argument about motivation behind career ambitions. She doesn’t trust her sleep-fuzzed brain to remain objective. “If you don’t want me as your lieutenant, you’ll have to fire me, or reassign me.”

“I’m not going to—“

“Good,” she says, and his mouth pinches into a line of annoyance at being interrupted again. Her mouth twitches.

“I can recommend you for some different positions,” he says, lifting a hand as she starts to protest. “For when I retire.”

“That won’t be necessary,” she says, trying to end the conversation. As usual, he doesn’t get the hint.

“No, but a word from your commanding officer usually helps,” he points out.

She sighs again, and she can’t help the ghost of a laugh from floating out with it. She’s not _really_ amused, but it’s some sort of irony she’s too tired to analyze. That he’s pushing so hard for her to explain something he should already know.

 _“What?”_ he snaps, sounding even more irritated.

“When you retire, I’m retiring too,” she says.

“You can’t—“

“Or resigning,” she continues, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Though, as you recently pointed out, they’ll give me almost anything I want. I’m sure I can get a reasonable retirement package out of it. At least enough to keep me comfortable as a secondary income.”

“You — what?”

A smile twists up the corner of her mouth at the confounded look on his face. She can’t help reaching out and brushing the edges of the confusion on his face, and he doesn’t flinch this time. She pulls back, shaking her head. She’s too tired for this. She can’t keep her thoughts straight, and she needs to end the conversation.

“You’re still going to run for fuhrer,” she says, keeping her voice matter-of-fact. “I doubt you lost your ambitions along with your sight.”

“That’s uncalled for,” he mutters, but he doesn’t seem bothered by what would be a cruel statement from anyone else. She’s said worse. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m going to keep working for you,” she says, using that voice she uses when talking to Ed about something painfully apparent. He frowns at the tone. The _“obviously”_ is unspoken, but only just, and they both know it.

“What if I don’t have a position for you?”

“Oh, you won’t hire any security?” she says, light and skeptical. “No event managers? Campaign—“

“Alright, alright,” he says, lifting a hand.

“I thought so,” she says, and she’s smug. Though it’s juvenile, she can’t help crossing her arms in victory.

“Is that necessary?” he asks, rolling his eyes.

“What?”

He crosses his arms in front of himself and tilts his head up toward where he thinks her face must be. He raises his eyebrows, and she laughs through the ache as his eyes swing too far to the right. It’s loud in the silence, and he smiles too.

“I suppose it isn’t, sir,” she says, the laugh still coloring her words. She drops her arms, and he drops his, too. “I’d better leave you to sleep.”

She turns, but he stretches a hand again, and it bumps hers. He grips, seemingly on instinct, though only for a moment.

“Thank you, lieutenant,” he says quietly.

“Of course, sir,” she says, but she doesn’t pull her hand away until he drops it.

* * *

“I can turn out the lamp.”

“I’ll get it, Hawkeye. Stop hovering.”

Sigh. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t sigh at me like I’m being difficult.” Petulant, which makes her mouth twitch in a smile that she swallows before she speaks again. “You _are_ hovering.”

“Sorry, sir.”

He rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Did you rearrange the furniture in the living room?”

“Oh, you noticed?”

“I told you not to!”

“I believe what you said was that the task was not in my job description.”

“And you agreed.”

“Yes; the task was not in my job description.”

“But you did it anyway.”

“Well, Hayate certainly didn’t.”

A growl of annoyance that makes her smile.

“You _could_ just say thank you,” she points out.

“Thank you,” he says with obvious reluctance.

“It was really a service to myself,” she admits. “Now I don’t have to listen to you swear every time you catch your shin on the chair.”

He rubs the bridge of his nose again, and she knows he’s not in the mood to keep joking.

“Good night, Colonel. I’m leaving Hayate with you tonight.”

“I know,” he says, lifting a hand dismissively.

She reaches to turn out the lamp.

 _“Don’t_ touch the lamp, lieutenant.”

“Of course, sir.”

* * *

Weeks turn to months, and the Colonel doesn’t say anything else about her leaving. Which is good, because she knows she _would_ leave if he truly wanted her to. He’s not stubborn enough to shoot himself in the foot on some kind of martyrdom. He wouldn’t dismiss her unless she truly had outstayed her usefulness.

The army has given him a year of paid leave to recuperate, and he’s determined to use that time to the fullest. Except in odd moments of stillness and quiet questions, tucked between arguments and sessions with his (mandated, he reminds her, grumbling) therapist, he’s the same as he always was. Confident, driven, smart, adaptive.

If Riza hadn’t seen those odd moments, she would have been worried that he was pushing himself too hard, not processing the loss. But she could always tell when that distant look came in his eye, when he was too still for too long. It was different from Ishval, but it tapped the same warning signs in her mind. But while that look in Ishval meant she had to hold him together while pulling him away from himself, the look now means a call to cancel his next appointment and a flick of the stove to make some tea.

Otherwise, he latches onto the achievable things and doesn’t let them go. Learning Braille had been his first request, and it had taken Breda, Falman, and Havoc combined to bring the number of huge tomes that would satisfy him. Still in the middle of that, he insisted hearing the news from three different publications as well as two speculative journals about the political future of Amestris.

“Did you just say _Grummand_ is on the short list?” the Colonel says, interrupting her in the middle of her sentence.

She looks up at him severely, leaning slightly to see past the mess of takeout boxes in the middle of the table.

“Are you reading while I’m reading to you?” she counters, her eyes catching the edge of a book on his lap.

“I was just practicing,” he says, frowning.

“You know you can’t pay attention if you do that,” she reminds him. Patiently.

“Stop using that voice,” he says, frowning deeper.

She blinks, caught off guard.

“What?”

“Like you’re my nurse, and I’m an idiot,” he says bluntly. The words are heated.

“I’m not your nurse, but you _are_ an idiot,” she shoots back without thinking. “Sir.”

“I’m _trying!”_ he snaps, and her fingers freeze on the journal, crinkling the pages slightly. She folds it closed, smoothing the wrinkles.

“I can finish another time,” she says, standing up.

“Sit down!” he barks, and she closes her eyes.

Pulls in a sharp breath. Releases it slowly. Sits down.

“Yes, sir.”

Tense silence stretches between them.

“I want to hear the end of the article,” he says shortly.

She swallows a smart remark and picks up the journal again. Finding her place, she continues where she left off. His hands tap absently on the table as she reads, and she almost smiles in spite of herself as her annoyance fades. Keeping his hands where she can see that he isn’t distracted is as close to an apology as she’s going to get, and it smooths the edges of her anger just as well.

The pads of his fingers are pink and irritated from his constant practice of Braille, but he doesn’t seem to notice. She finishes, and his hands go immediately back to his lap.

“Thank you,” he says, and his mouth keeps moving when he stops talking, mouthing whatever words his fingers are pressing against.

“Of course, sir,” she says, folding the journal again and stacking the remains of lunch to clear the table.

“You shouldn’t—“ he starts, but she’s tired of having the same argument about whether or not she is a housekeeper and if she isn’t, whether or not he will hire one. Because he won’t.

“What are you reading?” she interrupts, quickly enough that she might have already been saying it when he started talking. She’s banking on his distraction to muddle that point.

“Minutes from some old meetings with Bradley,” he says after a moment. His brow is creased, whether in suspicion or concentration, Riza isn’t sure.

“They translate those into Braille?” Riza asks, surprised.

“Sheska is beginning the process,” Mustang says, and Riza nods as understanding washes over her. She balances the remains of food on her elbow as the rest of her arms are taken up with unwieldy paper boxes and bags.

“I’m sure she’s enjoying that,” she comments, stepping carefully into the kitchen.

“She apparently just finished recreating the entire library that burned down, so she was bored,” the Colonel says, and she can hear the amusement in his voice.

“Naturally,” Riza muses.

She slides the food into the small ice box and dumps the paper into the garbage.

When she goes back out, Mustang is absorbed in his minutes once more. She pauses in the doorway, watching him. It feels wrong, dangerous, to let her eyes move over him, but she doesn’t have the energy to stop herself all the time. Without the threat of him looking up and seeing her staring, there’s little to stop her. She tells herself it’s to make sure that he’s alright, to catch the odd moments before they happen and forestall any issues from precariously placed objects that he can’t see.

She tells herself that as her eyes catch on his hair, his shoulders, the set of his mouth. His hair falls in front of his eyes, and he brushes it away on instinct, then frowns as he realizes he’s lost his place.

He still wears his uniform, even though he doesn’t go into the office most days. And shouldn’t go into the office at all since he’s on medical leave, as everyone keeps telling him, but following arbitrary rules has never been a strength of his. The familiar blue wraps around him and makes him seem … normal. _Whole,_ she thinks, and hates herself for it.

“Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir?”

But, those thoughts are getting fewer and further between. Maybe that’s what it means to accept the inevitable.

* * *

Mustang had been a nightmare ever since he got the letter from Central Command.

It was printed in both lettering and Braille, but he had tucked the one behind the other and read it himself over breakfast. As if he thought she would try to get a peek. Riza would have been offended if it hadn’t been a little bit true.

She doesn’t snoop. The Colonel had always had his secrets, and that was fine with her. He had a higher security clearance, anyway. She didn’t need to know everything; he would tell her what she needed to know, and she trusted him.

But after their third argument between breakfast and lunch, she would have been sorely tempted to at least read the letterhead and see _who_ had put the man in such a foul mood. But by then, the letter was firmly in his jacket pocket and there was no chance of an accidental peek.

Days pass like this. Mustang acting like Hayate when he got thorns in between his toes, and Riza waiting for him to figure it out. Riza does everything she normally does, and the Colonel accepts her work grudgingly and with far less grace than usual.

Try as she might, Riza cannot follow Halia’s remonstrations to remain calm and patient. She considers it a success if she only yells back at him half the time, and never in public. She throws caution to the wind on three separate occasions and asks him what is bothering him. His responses vary, but he gets his message across just fine: leave it alone.

She leaves it alone. She waits for him to figure it out.

More days pass.

He doesn’t figure it out.

She tries _one more time._

“Something is wrong,” she says, coming on strong because softer approaches clearly aren’t working.

“The typing is wrong,” he says, trying once more to read a sentence and then throwing his hands up in frustration. “Sheska—“

“Sheska is learning, too,” Riza interrupts. “She’s made mistakes before. Just tell her tomorrow, and she will fix it. You _know_ that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Then _what_ are you talking about?”

Mustang slams the book closed, and it sounds so much like a gunshot that Riza almost jumps. Her heart pounds with a burst of adrenaline and the sudden energy spurs her forward recklessly. She moves her chair forward, closer to his. The legs groan as they drag on the floor, and the colonel’s face turns slightly toward the noise. He looks momentarily distracted out of his anger, and Riza jumps off the cliff.

“You’re upset about something,” she says quietly. “And _don’t_ try to tell me that you aren’t, because I know you. You need to deal with it, whatever it is. You can tell me, you can tell Thomas, I don’t care. But you have to _deal with it.”_

If she reaches out, she could touch him.

“Nothing is wrong,” he says, and the words are like the crush of bone against bone.

“Colonel—“ she starts, reaching for his shoulder, but he wrenches away before she can even reach him. Like he _knew_ what she was going to do even without seeing it. She pulls her hand back like she’s been burned.

“Stop asking,” he says, and his voice is cold.

He reaches for his cane, and she has to stand and stumble to push her chair backward before his head rams into her as he stands.

“Yes, sir,” she whispers, and her cheeks are hot from shame even though she didn’t _do anything wrong._

The last time he had rejected her so thoroughly in anything had been half their lifetimes ago, and he had at least done her the favor of looking embarrassed that time. The look on his face this time was impatience and uncaring.

She doesn’t mention it again.

She stops initiating conversations, partially because they always end in arguments and partially because she doesn’t even know what to say anymore. A shred of her wonders if he will notice, if he will talk instead, but he doesn’t. Silence threads between them where there used to be an easy give-and-take, and Riza doesn’t know what’s happening but she stops caring. Or, rather — as Halia would say — she processes the grief of caring as best she can and then locks it away for later.

She does her job.

For weeks.

And hopes that he’s talking to someone else. Hopes that he’s figuring it out.

Because she can’t keep these thoughts locked away forever, and she can feel herself approaching the kind of desperation that will lead her to a place she can’t come back from.

* * *

Thumping from the master bedroom has Riza checking her watch and rubbing the bridge of her nose. She’s been ready for ten minutes, but had admittedly been avoiding the Colonel after an uncharacteristically waspish breakfast. They need to leave in two minutes if he wants to have a hope of making it to work for the meeting he had been harping about for days.

After weeks of near complete silence, she had been almost _grateful_ for the annoyed reminders about exactly when and where the meeting would be. But now the time has come, and — judging by the clatter — he’s not ready yet.

“Colonel?” she calls down the hallway as she approaches the room. He hates when she just _appears_ , so she tries to give him plenty of warning.

“I’m still here,” he snaps back, voice muffled through the door.

There’s no winning with him right now, but it still makes her eyes narrow in annoyance.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asks, stepping up to the door which is decidedly closed.

“I’m sure you _can,”_ he mutters, and Riza pulls in a breath, releasing it between her teeth. She will pretend that he didn’t mean for her to hear that.

“Sir?” she says again as something else thuds. A drawer, probably, by the sound of it.

“I need my coat.”

“It’s on the first hanger in the closet.” He knows that. She frowns.

“Not that one.”

“May I come in?”

“Sure, yes,” he says impatiently, and she opens the door.

The vision of Mustang in a dress shirt partially buttoned over a rumpled undershirt is before her, and that surprises her enough that she almost doesn’t look at the rest of him. Even in those early weeks when she helped him to the bed and made sure he was ready for sleep, he was fully dressed in pajamas that covered as much as his uniform. He is fastidious about his appearance, always, even when there really isn’t anything to hide. She thinks it’s something that reassures him, though she doesn’t ask. Even blind, he can dress himself in his normal clothes. Organizing his bureau and closet by color with physical dividers between them was one of his only non-work requests, and he had seemed easier when it was done.

He’s in his uniform from the waist down — neat blue and meticulously laced boots. The boots even look like he shined them, which must have been a difficult task eased only slightly by muscle memory. _I could have done that easier,_ she can’t help but think, even as Halia’s voice reminds her that he needs to do things himself. That she can’t take away his agency.

“Which coat are you looking for, colonel?”

He flinches slightly, and she tries to let the anger diffuse as it washes over something that feels suspiciously like hurt. She tries to remember that this is difficult for him, too. More difficult for him than for her. He’s not used to asking for help, so he doesn’t. And when she does help, he resents that she has to even as he appreciates the gesture. And if she helps too much, he broods and snaps. She feels like she’s walking a tightrope above a bonfire in the best of times, but the past month has left her wondering if the rope is even still there, or if she’s just trudging through the flames.

“I need the dress blues,” he says after a moment.

She frowns again, but doesn’t dare ask why. She ordinarily would, but not now. Not when every word is a fight.

“Alright,” she says, stepping beside him and letting her eyes scan over the contents of the closet.

There, on the small higher bar that’s almost out of reach. She had put it there along with his nicest suit and winter jacket, so he wouldn’t be thumbing through them constantly as he searched for clothes to wear each day.

“It’s on the higher bar,” she says, and turns to watch his reaction.

His face stays in the same annoyed frown he had been wearing when she walked in, and he steps closer as he reaches upward.

Riza moves out of the way automatically, staying close in case he loses his balance.

But he doesn’t. He knows where the bar is, and he locates the coat in a moment. He pulls it off the hanger and gets one arm in before he hesitates.

Riza almost asks what’s wrong, but then remembers that she doesn’t want to get her head bitten off. She watches as his fingers skim down the material of the sleeve, the front.

She’s watched his hands a lot since his medical leave. Pressing against the puzzling bumps of Braille that he managed to learn with astounding rapidity. Wrapping around his cane to navigate through unfamiliar places. What he’s doing now is familiar to her: searching. It’s what he does to envelopes, boxes, overcoats with pockets. She wonders what he’s searching for.

“Does it — look alright?” he asks, and the hesitation is barely an instant. But it’s there. Begrudging because he can’t answer his own question.

“It’s been steamed once a week,” she says by way of response.

He nods curtly and shrugs into the rest of the coat. He finishes buttoning his shirt, then starts buttoning up the coat. Riza sees right away that he’s off by a button.

And they’re already running late.

“Sir,” she says, steeling herself, but Mustang cuts her off.

“We’re late; let’s go.”

He starts moving, and she follows close behind.

“Your buttons are off,” she says, looking around the room for his cane in case he forgot where he put it.

Losing his cane would be _just_ what they needed right now.

She sees it by the door, thankfully right where it usually is. But her momentary distraction means she doesn’t see him stop and runs into his back. He grunts in surprise, and she just barely keeps them from toppling over.

“Sorry, sir,” she says, annoyed at herself.

He reaches for his cane as he steps forward, the other hand undoing the buttons he had started.

“Just go,” he says, and he sounds tired.

“Your buttons, colonel?”

He flinches again, and Riza wishes she hadn’t said anything.

“We have to go,” he grinds out, but he stops in the doorway and turns around. Riza is watching him this time, so she stops too. “Do them up, please. Quickly.”

“Yes, sir,” she murmurs, not looking at his face. She’s sure he’s not pleased about this circumstance, and she doesn’t need the look on his face to confirm it.

She kneels to start at the bottom, her fingers finding the button and buttonhole. He shifts his weight, and his knee knocks into her arm. It reminds her, unhelpfully, exactly where her hands and fingers are in relation to his anatomy. Thankfully, she’s at the bottom of his stomach in a matter of moments. The coat, which is flared at the bottom, narrows here and she has to slow down as the buttons become more difficult.

Her fingers slip against his dress shirt as she stands, poking her tongue out and narrowing her eyes in concentration. Concentrating on the stiff buttons from a hardly-used coat. Not on the sudden image of him bursting into the room at the laboratory, his stomach burned to cauterize wounds that should have killed him. The burns are still there, two layers of fabric away from where her fingers are rushing through the buttons.

He had killed an immortal being, to keep Riza alive.

_He can kill a homunculus, but not tell me why he’s acting like such a—_

“Done,” she says, securing the last button at his neck.

Her fingers graze his skin by accident, and she jerks her head up to apologize.

She had forgotten, in her distraction, that buttoning his buttons meant that her face would be extremely close to his face.

“Sorry,” she _stammers,_ to her eternal mortification. She steps back so quickly, she almost trips over her own feet.

In that moment before she moves, she catches a glimpse of his face. And he doesn’t look annoyed. He looks — it’s a familiar look, but she can’t place it before he’s turning to the door.

“Let’s go.”

The drive to Central Command is silent, and she walks the Colonel into the building as she always does. She assumes it will be the same as every other time she walks him to his office — coworkers jostling him and telling him he should be at home. People he knows less well noticing him in the corridors and immediately turning to whisper to their friends. Higher-ups greeting him with the suspicious cordiality of someone who knows which way the tide is turning.

They make it twenty steps in the door, Mustang reminding her under his breath that they’re going to the secondary conference room, before someone notices them.

“General! Congratulations. Looking forward to having you back, sir.”

General. General?

Riza salutes at the Major who doesn’t even acknowledge her presence, keeping her face neutral as they pass. Mustang just nods at him.

“General Mustang! I’m glad I’m not the only one running late to the ceremony. They can’t get started without the man of honor, eh?”

Man of honor. Her brain is skittering around like Winry when Ed’s hidden half of the bolts she needs for a project.

“Knowing General Grummand, I’m sure he has.”

General Raven laughs, then turns to Riza.

“I can take him to the platform; I assume you’re staying to watch?”

Staying to watch.

A few more bolts fall into her hands, but everything is moving too fast to put it together fully.

“Thank you, sir,” Riza says, feeling the hand slip from her elbow as they slow at the double doors of the conference room.

“Pity this is the nicest room they could get ready in time for the ceremony,” the other man says, nodding his thanks at Riza as she pulls open the door and lets the two of them in first.

“Pity,” she agrees under her breath, eyes sweeping over the small crowd and landing on General Grummand at the front of the room, already in the middle of a speech.

Though she hadn’t actively realized this would be a promotion ceremony, some part of her had figured it out, because she isn’t surprised at what she sees. She locates a familiar face as Quentin leads Mustang — _General_ Mustang? — to the front.

“Everything alright?” Breda whispers, shifting unnecessarily to give her room in the empty seat next to him. “I saved you a seat.”

“Thanks,” she whispers back, nodding at Havoc, Fuery, and Falman as they lean out from the other side of Breda to grin in her direction.

“They should have given him the promotion months ago,” Havoc says, and Breda rolls his eyes at what is clearly an oft-rehashed argument.

“He refused. You know that. I heard they had to go through back channels to make him take it this time.”

“If someone offered to promote me while I was on leave, I would have said _yes_ before they finished asking,” Havoc mutters, leaning back in his seat.

“That’s why no one offered,” Falman says, in an uncharacteristic jab that makes Breda cover up a laugh with a loud cough.

Riza feels like she’s ten steps behind in this conversation. They had all known that the Colonel — the General — Mustang — had been promoted. They had _all known._

The letter from Central Command.

The fact that he hadn’t asked her to take him to work since.

And, of course, the dress blues. The last bolt in her waiting hands, that she feels like an idiot for not suspecting sooner.

“Did they offer you a promotion, too?” Fuery asks, cutting a glance at General Grummand, who is still talking, before looking at Riza.

“What? Oh, no,” she says quickly. Too quickly.

Havoc takes the toothpick out of his mouth and points it at her.

“You’re lying. I told you they would give her a promotion!”

“She did way more than you did,” Breda points out.

“I was _paralyzed!”_

 _“Sssh!”_ Fuery says, jabbing an elbow into Havoc’s arm and a finger into Breda’s.

Riza quickly faces forward. She can see a few curious faces looking back at them, and she doesn’t want any more eyes on her face than there already are. She can still feel Havoc looking at her. His eyes stir up all the frustration and irritation and annoyance and _hurt,_ and by the time the ceremony is over she’s really and truly angry for the first time in a long time.

But she’s a professional. She nods and salutes and smiles and nods and salutes and smiles at anyone who bothers to look at her, and she walks the General out to the car when he says he’s ready to go.

She might close the doors a little too hard, but there’s only so much she can do with anger this hot running under her fingers.

She tries to breathe. Tries to put it away, to let it diffuse, but it won’t go away. It seethes in her skin and her bones until she wants to pull herself apart and just _scream._ She makes it most of the way back to his apartment before she starts a conversation for the first time in weeks.

“Were you _ever_ going to tell me?” she asks, managing to disguise the hurt under the anger. That’s an emotion both of them are much more familiar with. “Or were you going to let me keep calling you Colonel until someone _else_ took me aside?”

He doesn’t respond, just turns his face toward the window.

Riza can feel the exact moment that her furious anger and desperation combine. Like sodium in water, like a spark and a stick of dynamite.

She swerves the car into a parking space in front of his apartment building, throwing it into park as tears blur her vision. She grits her teeth against them because she _knows_ they will make her voice wobbly and weak and she cannot sound weak right now. She needs to be _angry._

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asks, and it’s a whisper because that’s all she can manage until she forces the tears away. She wipes them out of her eyes impatiently and clears her throat, continuing in a stronger voice. “Is this why you were upset? Why would a promotion—“

She always thinks before she speaks. Mustang doesn’t, but she _does._ The fact that she hasn’t this time is merely because of a lack of time. She’s still reeling, her subconscious still slotting this information into the last few weeks and analyzing what is explained by it and what isn’t.

One big explanation doesn’t hit until she’s already halfway through the question.

Brigadier General, Grummand had said as he pinned the new rank onto Mustang’s dress blues.

_“Killed in action and promoted two ranks for it. Brigadier General Hughes.”_

“Hughes,” she breathes out, closing her eyes and feeling irrationally angry at herself for not knowing something she couldn’t have known.

“I’m fine, lieutenant,” the General says, his voice too calm. Too cold.

Like her father. A stone. A wall.

“No, you’re not!” she shouts, her eyes flying open as she whirls to face him in the automobile. “Stop saying that!”

“What do you want me to say?” he says, his voice even calmer and quieter. “That I’m upset to hold the same rank as a fallen friend?”

_“Yes!”_

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense for it to be true!” she’s still yelling, and the fact that he’s not yelling makes her feel hysterical. She hasn’t felt like this since before she’d even _met_ Mustang, a child throwing a tantrum as her father patiently watched.

He opens the car door, and the fact that he doesn’t look at her shouldn’t hurt but it _does._ He couldn’t _see_ her even if he had turned his head toward her, but it still hurts.

She gets out of the car, too, walking around to help him into the building. She breathes in time with their steps, not saying anything. He barely touches her — just enough to keep from stumbling on a step or a door frame. She tells herself she’s not going to make a scene in public. Because she’s _not_ hysterical, even if Mustang is making her feel like she is.

But the moment the door of the apartment clicks shut behind them, she speaks again.

“You can pretend you don’t feel anything if that’s what you want to do, General,” she says, and she can hear the anger in her words even as she forces them to be calm. “If that’s what you need to do, fine. I think that’s stupid, with all due respect, but it’s your choice.”

He doesn’t say anything. They both know she isn’t done. His fingers are wrapped around the cane, and his face is set in resignation that makes her want to scream.

“What you cannot do is continue to treat me the way you have for the past month. You —“ She pauses, breathing, and choosing her words carefully. “I’ll find an assistant who will help you here, and I’ll continue to do the deskwork to keep the office running.”

“I haven’t treated you harshly,” he says, and _finally_ there’s heat in his words. He’s defensive, frowning. “I haven’t — _abused_ you, lieutenant! If you’re looking for an excuse to leave, you don’t have to—”

“I’m _not_ looking for an excuse to leave!” she fires back.

“It certainly _sounds_ like you are! I’ve been telling you to hire an assistant for weeks, and now you throw it in my face like it’s your only escape!” he spits back, sounding disgusted.

“It might _be_ my only escape!” she shouts, stepping forward and balling her hands into fists at her sides.

“Then go!” he snaps, throwing a hand out toward the door. It stops inches from her face, but she doesn’t say anything, and he certainly doesn’t notice.

“I don’t _want to go!”_ she yells, a strangled sound of frustration following her words like an unearthly growl.

“Then what _do_ you want?” he thunders.

“I want you to _stop!_ ”

“Stop _what?_ Stop asking you to do your _job?_ Stop—“

“Stop pushing me _away!_ It — it —“ something inside of her wrenches and she can’t think of the right way to say it so she just says it, even though her voice cracks in half as she does, all the anger draining away. “It’s killing me, sir.”

The words hang in the air, ragged breaths the only thing breaking the silence.

“Lieutenant,” he finally says.

His voice is cracked too, and their anger drips away together, leaving both of them exhausted and shaky.

Riza leans against the wall, tipping her head back to rest on it and closing her eyes. She hears movement beside her, and when Mustang talks again, she can tell he’s leaning on the wall beside her.

“I didn’t — I didn’t think. I wasn’t thinking.”

“I could have told you that, sir,” she murmurs, wondering why she’s grinning a little when it feels like her heart might break, or burst.

“I never meant to hurt you,” he continues, and her heart does break then. Or bursts. Or both. “It was asinine. But I kept thinking—“

She can hear a sound, and when she cracks one eye open, she can see him rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“It’s stupid.”

“What did you keep thinking?”

“He never got to _be_ a brigadier general. He was promoted above me after — he died. And it felt right, somehow, that he would be a higher rank in the end. He always was a better man.”

He chuckles with no humor.

“I told you it was stupid. I’m going to be the fuhrer. Obviously I’m going to outrank him.”

“He was a good man,” Riza says, biting the inside of her bottom lip as memories swirl in front of her eyes. “But you’re a good man too, General. Outranking him won’t make him any less.”

“I _know_ that.”

“I know you do,” she says, shifting her weight and bumping into his shoulder accidentally. He doesn’t shift away, so she doesn’t either. “But I don’t think it’s stupid.”

“I threw a month-long temper tantrum, lieutenant.”

“Okay, _that_ part was stupid,” she agrees, and they both chuckle at that. “But your feelings aren’t stupid. It feels like — “ She swallows and scrubs her eyes again. “It feels like leaving him behind.”

He’s silent for a moment. Then two. She looks over and sees the glint of tears on his cheek. He doesn’t bother to wipe them away, and his voice is low and a little unsteady when he eventually replies.

“I don’t want to leave him behind, lieutenant.”

“I know, sir,” she says. Her hand finds his. “We won’t.”

They stay like that for a few minutes, only Mustang’s occasional sniff and her occasional wiping of tears interrupting the silence.

“If you don’t become fuhrer, I think Hughes will haunt you,” she finally says.

Her statements hangs in the air, and for a moment Riza thinks she’s stepped wrong. Then the General chuckles.

“Nightmares about postcards from Gracia,” he says softly.

“That horrible noise he made when he got excited will ring in your ears.”

“Photos of Alicia will show up in my paperwork.”

“Glasses glinting on the edge of your vision.”

By the end of their list of the ways Hughes could haunt Mustang, they’re both sitting on the floor and laughing so hard that tears of mirth join their brothers of anger and grief. Maddeningly, Riza thinks Hughes would like that.

* * *

Riza would have sold her apartment months ago if she wasn’t getting paid just enough to maintain it comfortably along with her other expenses. She spent every night but the rare occasion staying in the guest bedroom at the General’s apartment, now. The inconvenience of having her things spread across the city between two residences is almost enough to make her sell it anyway.

But she hasn’t. Because she doesn’t know if there will be a time when Mustang will truly want her to leave — and not just _say_ he wanted her to leave because he thought it was what was best for her. Not just _tell_ her to leave because he didn’t want to be a weight on her ankle, dragging her down when he knew she had the potential to rise.

He never seems to realize that not everyone aspires for the top.

He never seems to realize that some people find a place along the way where they tap into a part of themselves they never knew they had, and they’re happy to stay there. In a place that feels like destiny.

It’s probably because he is never satisfied, she thinks as she stretches and pushes back the sheets that smell like her now. He is never satisfied. Not with himself, not with his work, not with his life. Never once has she seen a look of relaxed pleasure on his face for more than a moment, a smile that says, “I finally did it.” Never.

Hayate jumps to the ground and stretches, and she smiles at him, running fingers along his ears. She’s just finished the training he needs to begin working with the General, and she’s not used to his constant presence here yet. It’s nice. It’s nice for her, and definitely for the poor dog who had to put up with Breda or Fuery for company when she couldn’t make it home to see him. It’s nice for Mustang too, because it means he will be able to move more quickly outside. With the cane, he’s restricted to a cautious pace, but once he and Hayate have grown used to one another, the instructor had promised that the General would be able to walk at a normal speed.

“Let’s not keep the General waiting,” Riza says softly to Hayate, who bounds for the door at once.

When she doesn’t open it immediately, he turns to look at her, curious. She just shakes her head as she pulls off her pajamas.

“I’m not going out there like this,” she chides. “Wait a moment.”

It doesn’t take long to button herself into her uniform, her second skin, and pull her hair back as she always does. But by then, Hayate is laying at the door, staring at her with clear canine impatience. As soon as she takes a step toward the door, Hayate has pushed himself onto his feet and is opening his mouth in a silly grin.

“Don’t jump on him,” she instructs, opening the door. “Remember what we learned. _Good morning.”_

She uses the key phrase they had been practicing, and that’s all the encouragement the dog needs to tear toward the General’s room. He noses the door open and disappears inside as Riza grabs her set of keys and goes to get breakfast for them both.

A new normal, three years after the world turned upside down. Two more promotions for Mustang, despite his assurances that the military wouldn't keep him — Lieutenant General, now. Enough promotions for her to keep pace.

He hasn’t said anything yet, but she can tell that he’s going to retire from the military soon. He’s been set on attaining the position of fuhrer as a civilian ever since the deep ravines of corruption in the military had been exposed in that explosive battle that almost ended — everything. _A battle that you did very little to help with,_ her brain likes to point out, unhelpfully.

 _“Public opinion is wary of the military,”_ Mustang has been saying as his fingers skim over the increasing number of political journals that he’s managed to acquire in Braille. _“It only makes sense, but that means the next elected fuhrer should come from outside of the military system.”_

 _“You’re hardly outside the system,”_ she had argued. _“Your military history isn’t something you can hide.”_

 _“No,”_ he had agreed, but he had stopped his fingers and lifted his head to smile at her. That smile that means he has a _plan_ ; the smile that makes her heart thud in excited anticipation too. _“But I can leverage it, Hawkeye. I’m the best of both worlds. Just watch.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick teaser mixed with a note: you may have noticed that the parts up to this point have followed the same pattern -- Roy in 1920 and Riza in the past. The next part will have Riza in 1920 and alllllll of Roy's POV from childhood onward. I expected his section to be equivalent in length to one of Riza's, but the man would not stop talking! Haha. As a result, Part 4 is three (beefy) chapters that I'll split between two updates so you're not swamped with a behemoth of backstory all at once.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Reviews are always appreciated.


	7. Part 4 - Chapter 7

— **1920 —**

The radio is turned up as loud as it goes, crackling voices hissing between static. It had been on all evening, with one of the campaign team stationed by it and listening for any news as the party continued around them. The unending chatter was mostly just speculative; the newscasters would report on the new numbers as districts turned in their votes to Central, but there wasn’t much point hanging on every update. Every district was different, and the most pivotal ones were the ones that would come in last. The ones with the highest population densities, the most checks and balances to ensure a proper count, always came in right before midnight. They were just waiting on Central district now, with the clock reading 11:42.

Riza can remember sitting by the radio with her father when Bradley was elected, listening attentively to every wave of new votes and chewing her lip as she wondered who would win. Her father had mostly been reading and taking notes on something to do with his research, but he would look up every once in a while and listen too. He hadn’t put his books away until close to midnight, settling into the armchair. In a rare display of physical affection, he had pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. Her head rested on his knee as she sat curled up on the worn rug, legs aching and gangly with a recent spurt of growth.

 _“Every election is history in the making,”_ he had said. _“Good or bad, it’s another choice that defines us.”_

He hadn’t supported Bradley. When she tried to ask, he muttered about how the fuhrer shouldn’t come from the military, that it gave the head of the country too much of an aggressive mindset. But he didn’t seem unduly bothered when Bradley had won; he hadn’t seemed unduly bothered by much of anything, as far as Riza could remember.

“—just got word that Central’s votes have been submitted,” Riza hears the announcer say, and her eyes flick to Jean. She puts a finger on her lips, pointing at the radio, and he nods as he snatches up the microphone. Kain, dutiful as always, switches on the sound as Jean opens his mouth to start speaking.

“I know we’re all very excited, but it sounds like Central has finally finished counting! Some quiet, please.”

Kain flips some more switches, and the radio announcer’s voice is suddenly pouring out of the larger speakers too. The redundancy echoes strangely in Riza’s ears, the tinny sound from the small radio in one ear and the richer sound filling the room in the other. She winces and steps away from the radio to rid herself of the almost painful sensation, and her eyes scan the room.

What had started as just a small gathering for their team to hear the results of the election together had turned into another publicity event before anyone quite realized what was happening. Mustang had been annoyed, though he agreed that it was good to rub elbows with more of his supporters. Riza can see now why he was annoyed; he’s exhausted. Never a man with boundless energy, he had always been careful about planning as much into each campaigning day as possible without overtaxing himself. This gathering is crossing that line, and she can see it in the way his smile no longer reaches his eyes. The way his right shoulder moves sometimes, like the beginning of a stretch that has nowhere to go. The way he brushes his thumb over the head of his cane like he’s trying to read Braille on the handle, taps his fingers against the connection between the head and the pole.

Mustang isn’t too far from her, so she skirts the edge of the crowd to join him. She taps twice on his shoulder as she comes up beside him, and he tilts his head slightly toward her without stopping his conversation. She’d startled him one too many times over the years by waiting patiently for him to finish some long-winded statement before announcing her presence. They had established the nonverbal acknowledgement early in his campaigning, after he turned away from a conversation with one of his first supporters and stepped on her _entire_ foot, sending them both to the floor and knocking over poor Mr. Peters for good measure.

“—close, with Mustang coming in over Grummand by a mere 246 votes,” the radio announcer is saying.

Riza tries to add the count to her mental tally, but numbers have never been her strength, so she waits for the crackly voice to tell her what that means. Mustang is listening now, Richard Banks having turned to talk to someone else. The room is far from quiet, private conversations murmuring as people discuss the implications of the news and do mental math.

“I won,” he says quietly, in a voice meant only for her. Her eyes run across his face, watching for — something. But the only sign he shows of realizing he’s just become the most powerful man in the country is a smug upturn of his lips. It almost erases the fatigue in his eyes.

“It’s not official until they release the final counts to the press,” she says, just to be difficult.

“It doesn’t have to be official to be true,” he says, and something in the words makes her search his face again.

She doesn’t know if it’s the stress and exhaustion of running for fuhrer finally catching up with him, or finally having the completion of his dream within reach, but he’s been inscrutable lately. Not all the time, but in moments like this, where it sounds like he might mean two things at once but she doesn’t have enough context to know what the second thing is.

 _Which is ridiculous,_ she thinks, _because I know just about all there is to know about him._ Even the things he experienced before they met, she’s gathered up from the scattered conversations and infrequent references and built a working knowledge. There should be nothing about him that eludes her, at this point.

So the fact that she’s not sure exactly what he means? It almost scares her, in a way that feels like silence where there should be words, like a steady gun in a scorched hallway ready to kill two people with one bullet.

But the radio announcer is saying that Mustang has (unofficially) won the election, and the room is erupting into cheers, so she shakes off the foreboding. She smiles at everyone who, like her, believed in one man’s dream to finally make this country a better place.

She accepts the congratulations, deflecting the praise that isn’t hers. She drags Kain out from behind his speakers and wires, replaces Jean’s whiskey with cider, and thanks all the donors she can find. She makes sure everyone knows that Patricia ran the public relations for the whole campaign and hints that she’s looking for a permanent position in the same field now that the election is over. She, along with the rest of their crew, starts shuffling people out of the room as graciously as possible.

She keeps an eye on Mustang, because the burst of energy he got when the radio declared him Amestris’ next fuhrer is starting to fade. He’s still shaking hands and laughing, but she knows it’s only a matter of time before the adrenaline leaves him. This crash won’t be as dangerous as the ones on the battlefield, or even the ones that had him falling asleep at his desk while he was trying to unearth the corruption that almost destroyed the world. But, old habits die hard, and saving Mustang from himself is certainly an old habit.

It’s past one in the morning before everyone is gone and they’re locking the door of the rented venue. Vato takes the key to return the next morning, since he’s the only one Riza feels like she can trust not to be hungover. Jean and Heymans are going to an afterparty, and between them she’s fairly certain Kain doesn’t stand a chance of getting out of it.

There’s a moment where Breda is laughing, Havoc is arguing with Fuery, and Falman is tossing the key into the air as Mustang reminds him what will happen if he doesn’t turn it in. A moment that makes her breath catch, that makes everything seem so _perfect_ and so _real_ that she’s afraid she will lose it forever if she doesn’t do _something._

So she grabs Kain with one arm and Vato with the other.

“Come on, team, circle up.”

“Ugh, Riza, we are _off duty,”_ Jean complains, but he lays an arm across Kain’s shoulders and tweaks some of her hair so she knows he’s not really mad. Vato stretches a hand to tap Mustang, who follows the line of it until he’s slotted in next to the tall man with a hand resting on Riza’s shoulder. Heymans yanks Jean closer to Mustang so he can stand between them, completing the circle.

“What’s up, fearless leader?” Heymans asks.

“Hey, _I’m_ the fearless leader!” Mustang complains.

“Who’s to say I wasn’t talking to you?”

“The fact that you argued shows that you know who’s really in charge,” Jean says.

“We did it,” Riza says, cutting off the argument that could continue for hours, a friendly bickering that’s home to her like no place ever has been. She didn’t really have anything to say; she just wanted to feel connected to them before the moment faded away. “We actually did it.”

“You could sound less surprised,” Mustang says, but he’s not really annoyed and they all know it.

“Give us a few words, Fuhrer Mustang,” Jean says. “Come on. Clearly Hawkeye is feeling sentimental.”

“I don’t think there’s anything left to say,” Mustang says after a moment that drags his voice into that rough place where it falls when the adrenaline leaves him. “So I’ll leave it in the immortal words of my lieutenant, my bodyguard, my campaign manager, my — irreplaceable friend: We did it. We actually did it.”

His fingers tighten on her shoulder as he speaks, the pause in his voice unnoticeable to anyone else and inscrutable to her. She smiles, still. For some reason, it’s a smile that makes her heart ache, so she tips her head up to look at the stars before anyone can see her tears.

Mustang is looking up too, and she sees the stars in his eyes again. The moonlight sifting through his hair.

They part ways with shouted promises and threats, and Mustang climbs into the passenger side of the automobile with a groan that Riza feels in her soul.

“I’m too old for this,” he says on an exhale that muddies the words. “What time is it?”

“2:04,” she replies.

He just groans again, rubbing a hand across his eyes as she puts the car in gear and starts down the road. They drive in silence, the sleepy haze of the early-late hour settling around them comfortably. When she slows down, Mustang frowns.

“We aren’t to the apartment yet.”

“No, we aren’t,” she agrees, braking the car and waving at the young man inside the small restaurant barely visible from the road. The restaurant door pushes open with a squeak and the jingle of a bell, and Mustang tilts his head, listening.

“Where—“

“You don’t recognize the door?” Riza asks, affecting severity. “You complain about it every time.”

“Here you go, Miss Hawkeye,” the young man says, handing her a paper bag through the window. “And congratulations Mr. Mustang, Fuhrer, sir!”

“Thank you,” Mustang manages to say through a yawn.

“It’s not official,” Riza says, but she winks at the young man.

“I’m not hungry,” Mustang says as she starts driving.

“Hold it,” Riza says, putting the bag on his lap. “You’ll be hungry in a minute.”

“I’m too tired to eat!”

“It’s the spicy curry place, Mustang. Take a deep breath.”

He huffs in annoyance, but she’s turning into the parking lot of his apartment when he speaks again.

“Alright, alright. You were right. I’m ravenous.”

“I know,” she says smugly, putting the vehicle into park and cutting the engine. “You haven’t eaten a bite in over twelve hours.”

“There was food at the party.”

“Can you feel the look I’m giving you, Mustang? Don’t start this argument with me. I know you didn’t eat anything, and so do you, so it’s a waste of time.”

He grumbles but doesn’t argue, taking her elbow as they walk into the building. She sets the food out on the table, not bothering with plates and bowls as she normally does. She grabs a couple of forks from the kitchen and comes back to find Mustang already sitting at the table and reaching for the nearest box.

“Dumplings,” she informs him. “Curry to the right.”

She puts a fork in front of him that he grabs immediately, burying it into the curry.

“Don’t eat it all,” she says, mouth full of stuffed flatbread. She hadn’t eaten much all day, either. Too busy. “I want some.”

“I haven’t eaten in twelve hours,” he says around the curry.

“There’s more food!” she says. “Dumplings, flatbread, that weird chicken thing. And, if you eat all that spicy food before you sleep, you’re going to regret it.”

She eyes him, but he’s not even slowing down. She shakes her head. _And he said he wasn’t hungry._

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“Are you willing to risk me rearranging all your furniture in revenge?”

“That’s a lot of work.”

She makes a grab for the container, but he must hear her start to move, because he pulls away, leaning back in his chair. He smirks at her, and she narrows her eyes.

“I’m very determined.”

She sits back in her chair as she kicks her brain into action, trying to devise the best way to get him to relinquish the curry.

“I know you are,” he says, and the tone of his voice makes her brain stutter to a stop.

There it is again, that inscrutable _thing_ that makes her wonder what she’s missing.

Just like that, it pulls open the trapdoor on that fear and dread she hasn’t fully processed yet. She’s too tired, _too tired,_ to fight off the wave of emotion that rips through her. Suddenly, everything is lit with a darker cast, and her heart thuds an ominous rhythm.

She needs to eat, and she needs to sleep.

She needs to get out of here.

“Hawkeye?”

“I — I’m really tired,” she says, swallowing past tears she doesn’t understand for the second time that night and watching her hands twist in her lap.

She’s just overwrought. They’ve all been pulling 18 hour days and keeping odd hours for the last couple of weeks. It’s throwing off her balance, and she hasn’t managed to find a time to see Halia in more than a month. That must be what it is.

“You can have the rest of the curry,” he says, and she can tell that he means it as a joke before she even looks at his face. She looks up, and his face is serious. The curry is on the table in front of him, and he’s spinning the fork in his fingers.

She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t stand up, either.

“H—“ he starts. The beginning of her name, the first breath, and she’s launching out of the chair.

“I need to go,” she says, feeling unhinged, uncontrolled, uncomprehending. “I—“

Mustang is standing too, and he reaches for her arm with a confidence she knows dimly is an achievement. But she pulls away too quickly. His fingers brush her sleeve, but she’s already at the door.


	8. Part 4 - Chapter 8

— **1890 —**

The first memory Roy has is of Joenna, smiling at him and giving him a cookie that Madame Christmas said he wasn’t supposed to have.

Joenna hadn’t been at the bar for long, but her face is crystalized in Roy’s memory in spite of her transience. Heart-shaped face, bright blue eyes, dark hair, and a smile that she wore like her dresses and scarves.

He wonders sometimes why his brain had chosen that as a first memory. If there was any significance to the first face he remembered being one that didn’t stay long.

Not his parents: he had been too young when they died.

Not even his aunt, though that was certainly the face he had seen the most.

 _“Your father was a good man,”_ Madame Christmas had always said, when he asked about his parents.

_“And my mother?”_

_“She must have been quite a woman to get him, don’t you think?”_

But he didn’t think, because he didn’t _know._ He didn’t know either of them like he knew the cook, the bartenders, the floor girls. He didn’t know them like he knew Madame Christmas — Aunt Chris, he was allowed to call her when the bar was closed, but the bar was hardly ever closed, so he never really got used to the shape of that name on his tongue. Madame Christmas was a name that meant tousled hair, a damp bar-rag wiping things off his face, and stern lectures about how he was too bright a light to stay in a place like this. Madame Christmas was a name that meant security, if not safety. It meant a place to run, and a host of expectations to fulfill that he hardly understood.

He grows up in the bar, holding onto the rickety legs of worn stools as he takes his first steps. Chasing the mop and broom as they clean out the dining area before the bar opens. Sitting on the kitchen floor and banging on the biggest pot they had with an old cracked spoon while the cook washes the dishes and sings songs in a language he doesn’t know.

He grows up laughing at the girls when they pull faces at him with their hair tied back and sweat on their faces as they clean — so different to how they look when the bar is open, he knows, even when he’s too young to know why. The girls are his siblings, and the fact that the faces change every few years is something that should bother him but doesn’t. Because it’s all he knows.

The faces change, but the things he remembers stay the same no matter who is behind them. Soft hands wipe his tears of frustration when someone at school teases him, stroke his baby face when he gets sleepy. Strong arms pull him into hugs when he smiles at them, catch him when his toddling steps throw him off balance. Kind voices tell him he is strong, he is kind, he is handsome, he is smart, he is _better._ They whisper encouragement that sounds like secrets, that sounds like dreams. They kiss his temple when he does something they like, and pinch his arm when he does something they don’t. They tease him constantly when he’s old enough to start being mischievous, and he quickly learns what a well-placed insect or hidden lipstick will get him. Shrieks and fire-bright eyes, laughter and exasperated tweaks of his nose.

Madame Christmas tries to keep him away from the bar during business hours, but when he starts school, that becomes harder. He figures out how to escape the room she calls his, no matter what lock she puts on it. He no longer falls asleep when the sun goes down, and his books don’t always hold his attention for the hours before sleep. Madame Christmas might try harder, if he made a nuisance of himself, but he doesn’t. He just climbs up behind the bar and watches the girls make drinks. Watches them interact with the men who wander in or come in for appointments. Watches the laughing men slip his aunt pieces of paper that disappear into her dress without ever quite being visible.

Most of the men don’t realize he’s even there, and the girls only acknowledge him as they pass with a wink and squeeze of his knee as he sits cross-legged on the stool.

He is unobserved, and he is safe. Watching the world spinning around him as he blinks and considers what it does. No one challenges him, no one scolds him, and he soaks in the peace that comes from anonymity.

When he thinks, later, about _home_ and what that means, this is what he remembers. The hum of private conversation, the soft laughter, the clink of glasses, and the knowledge that he is invisible. It’s a comfort that, like most memories of childhood, does not come again.

* * *

Roy is fourteen when his schoolteacher hands him a sealed envelope, unmarked, and tells him to take it home to his parents. He nods without correcting her, though it occurs to him that he’s been at that school for ten years, and they still don’t remember that he lives with his aunt. It’s a testament to how little he gets in trouble — and how little Madame Christmas participates in the events that have most parents crowding through the doors.

He flips the envelope over in his fingers as he walks through the busy streets of Central. Spluttering automobiles are scattered among the horse-drawn carriages, disrupting the afternoon air with thundering engines and plumes of smoke.

As much as Roy is usually interested in watching the rambling metal contraptions that Madame Christmas swears will overtake carriages in her lifetime, today he is watching the light catch on the pale surface of the envelope and shine a brilliant _white_ into his eyes. Today, he is distracted by wondering what the letter might contain, and what it might mean for him.

He hopes it isn’t about what happened with Finn and Varga, because he had already said he wasn’t involved in the fistfight. Anyone with eyes could have seen that he was just debating the _idea_ of monarchy, not suggesting that Amestris should change its entire governmental system. But he doesn’t know what else it could be, so he sighs and decides to just explain what happened. Madame Christmas does at least listen to honesty, even if she doesn’t always appreciate it. They are alike in that way, he thinks.

“There was a fight,” he says as he hands over the letter.

He doesn’t have long before the bar opens, and he knows that if he waits until she’s distracted she will just be more annoyed. And if she’s annoyed, she’s much more likely to do something drastic — like take his books away for a day or two and prod him into some physical labor that he is fully capable of doing but thoroughly uninterested in.

“You got into a fight?” she says, looking at him as she rips the envelope open by tearing off the side. Her fingers are pulling out the letter and shaking it open before he can respond.

“No — yes — mm.”

He tries to figure out what to say before he realizes she’s not listening anyway. He gives up, watching her eyes scan the single sheet of paper. Her face betrays nothing; it never does. She wears the same face when she’s scolding him as when she’s talking to a client. Her eyes meet his when she finishes.

“Your teacher, Mrs.—“ She looks back down at the paper, taking in the looping signature at the bottom. “Daniels. She says she can’t teach you anymore.”

 _“What?”_ That hadn’t been what he expected at all. “It was just an argument! I didn’t—“

 _“_ She says we should pursue alternative education,” Madame Christmas interrupts.

“I — what?”

“You’re a smart boy,” Madame Christmas says brusquely, folding up the letter. She’s not looking at him, and she sounds like she’s talking to herself more than him. “I always thought so, but what do I know? I’m just a barkeep. Apparently I was right. You need a tutor.”

“A tutor?” Roy says.

“Probably more than one,” she amends.

Anger flares in him, sudden and indisputable.

“What are you _talking_ about?”

“Roy,” Madame Christmas says, and Roy gets the feeling that most people would have at least _tried_ to soften their voices at this point, but Madame Christmas does not. Her face is hard and unmoving, reassuring in its constancy. “She says you’ve read every book in the classroom and written reports on half of them.”

“Over half,” he mutters. “But—“

“She doesn’t have anything else for you to do.”

“That doesn’t—“

 _“_ Yes, it does,” she interrupts. “If you’re going to be challenged, you need a new teacher. One that can focus on you. Find your potential.”

“But it’s the middle of the year!” he protests, anger flaring as he crosses his arms. “This doesn’t make sense!”

Madame Christmas examines him, and Roy knows she is thinking. When she speaks again, her voice is unchanged.

“You don’t have friends, Roy. Why are you fighting this? Is there a _reason_ you want to stay at the school?”

Roy thinks about it, drawing on Madame Christmas’ calm to ease his frustration. If it was truly unfair, she would be angry too. He’s seen her angry. It’s the only time she has a different face than the one she’s wearing now.

“No,” he says slowly.

“Change is hard, but it’s life,” she says then, like that solves everything. She folds up the letter. “I’ll find you a tutor. Beth’s brother will know someone.”

And that’s that. He has a tutor within a week, and he never goes back to school.

He doesn’t miss it.

* * *

Roy goes through six tutors in three years.

Two left because he kept getting into debates with them and _winning._ One was found in a compromising situation with one of the floor girls, and Madame Christmas declared it a conflict of interest. She kept him as a client, of course, but she found another tutor for Roy. The other three are simply found to be lacking in the education required to maintain a challenge, whether through their own admission or Madame Christmas’ critical eye.

“It’s simple,” Roy says, tapping his fingers on the book and looking out the window. People walk past the window, everyone focused on their own lives. Their own problems.

Tutor #7, Mr. Wilson, doesn’t back down.

“Explain.”

“If color is a result of reflected light, then it follows that black would be the absence of all color, not the combination of it.”

“But if you combine paints—“

“You don’t get black,” he interrupts, impatient. “You get a vague sort of — brown color.”

“The points remains.”

“Paint and light are different,” Roy says, reaching for the prism that Mr. Wilson had brought with him. His fingers brush the planes, knocking it onto a different face and changing the placement of the rainbow that sprayed out from it. “When plain light, white light, shines into the prism, it is separated into colors. Therefore, white is the combination of all color.”

“When speaking of _light,_ perhaps.”

“Yes,” Roy says, finally looking at the man. Mr. Wilson doesn’t look frustrated. He imagines that the look on his tutor’s face is actually eerily similar to the look on his own: focused curiosity. That spurs him forward. “So I suppose it boils down to which representation of color is the baseline, in scientific circles.”

“And _that,”_ Mr. Wilson says with satisfaction, “is the question. Which basis of color _should_ be the foundation referred to in scientific exploration? Make your case, but include a rebuttal. I expect at least ten paragraphs by next Thursday. I’ll leave these journals with you, but you might want to consult the Central Library for other articles.”

“I’ve tried to borrow journals from the Central Library,” Roy says, his eyes lighting on the stack of research Mr. Wilson had brought with him. “They won’t release them to a minor.”

“I’ve put in a request,” Mr. Wilson says. “You’ll check them out under my account.”

Roy runs a thumb over the precious stack of literature. More scientific research than he’s ever had possession of all at once in his life. There’s a hunger in his skin that makes him want to pull the journals to his chest, but he doesn’t.

“Alright,” Roy says, and after a moment that whispers in his ear like Agnes’ voice, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Ten paragraphs, Roy.”

Daisy goes with him to the library, and her small smile turns genuine when they walk into the stacks. Bookshelves reach to the ceiling and press into them before and behind like a warm blanket in the middle of a winter storm.

“I’ve never seen so many books at once,” she whispers, threading her arm more tightly through his. “This is amazing.”

“You can check out your own, if you’d like,” he says, smiling at her with fondness that trickles into amusement. “It’s a public library.”

“I will,” she says, “once you get your schoolbooks.”

“Journals,” he corrects.

She flutters a hand dismissively, eyes still on the bookshelves. He shakes his head, ignoring the annoyance at what feels like a slight. It’s not; he knows her well enough to know that.

The ability to interpret and understand others’ emotions doesn’t come naturally to Roy. He assumes it must be easy for some people. Some people must be born knowing the difference between a real smile and a fake one, between a statement that fits in smoothly with the conversation and one that halts the flow. Roy is not that person, but he has spent enough time observing complex interactions that he can tell the difference now. It’s a knowledge more cerebral than innate, but the result is the same: he doesn’t embarrass himself or others in conversation, and he knows how to make an exit before anything gets violent.

He also knows, dangerously, how to start an argument that will not end well. But he doesn’t use that knowledge often. Madame Christmas has very little patience for people who pick fights, and she has a broad definition of what it means to pick a fight. It’s safer for him to stay behind the bar, smiling at the girls as they come up for a refill, and smoothly taking messages for his aunt when she’s otherwise engaged.

“You shouldn’t be so bookish,” Daisy advises as he finds the section of journals that the librarian had suggested. “Girls are intimidated by that, you know.”

“I’m not really interested in finding a girl right now,” he tells her, running his fingers over the journals, tilting his head to read the titles.

“You should be!” she cries. “You’re so young and handsome, Roy. Now is the time!”

“Why now?” he asks, locating the journal he’s interested in and consulting the paper the librarian had handed him. Issue numbers are scrawled on it — every issue she had thought might be useful. He starts pulling them off the shelf.

“Youth is temporary, books are forever!” Daisy says staunchly. “Come on, Roy. What about Gwen?”

“What about her?” He looks at the table of contents of one, shakes his head, and flips the next one open.

“You two flirt _scandalously.”_

“She flirts with me,” Roy mutters, putting an issue aside to check out and flipping open the next one. “I just flirt back.”

“She’s pretty.”

“Yes,” Roy agrees, putting that issue on the shelf and checking the last one.

“So?”

“So?” he echoes, keeping that issue too and starting to walk once more, scanning for the next journal.

“So, do you like her?”

“She’s nice,” Roy says. “Interesting to talk to.”

“Ugh,” Daisy sighs. “You’re impossible. Are all kids like you?”

“I don’t think so,” Roy says, in what he hopes is a reassuring voice as he locates the next journal. “I doubt most _kids_ are in Central library looking at scientific journals.”

“Well, you’re smart,” Daisy says with a shrug.

“Bookish,” he reminds her, smiling a little when she makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a _tut._ He consults his paper before pulling issues off the shelf.

“You are too clever to have a nice conversation with,” she says. “You need to compliment people more, and stop twisting their words around.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, but he’s not, and she knows it. She shoots him a glare, but she’s grinning too. She kisses his cheek when he stretches to put the journal away.

“What was that for?” he asks, looking askance at her as he checks the table of contents.

“Because you look so cute when you’re being annoying,” she tells him, and he can’t help laughing at that.

* * *

Mr. Wilson stays for almost a full year before he asks to meet with Madame Christmas. Roy know what that means, having seen it six times before, and can’t help feeling disappointed. He had learned more from Mr. Wilson than any other tutor, and he wasn’t looking forward to starting over. Mr. Wilson had seemed to understand him better than the others; he never pressed Roy into assignments that didn’t make sense to him, instead allowing Roy to propose alternative assignments that demonstrated the same knowledge. That was a flexibility Roy had never gotten before, and he had grown accustomed to it.

When Mr. Wilson goes into the back room to talk to his aunt, Roy sits at the bar feeling sorry for himself in a way he doesn’t often allow.

“Why so glum?” Theresa asks, plopping down in the stool on the other side of the bar and resting her chin in her hand in a posture that mirrors his exactly. Except she is pouting her rouged lips outrageously, which Roy certainly isn’t.

“Girlfriend troubles,” he says seriously, managing to keep a straight face until her eyes get wide and hopeful. Then he laughs, and she smacks him in the shoulder.

“I was so excited!” she says. “You’re a terrible boy.”

“It’s nothing,” he says, laughing and rubbing his shoulder though it doesn’t hurt. He infuses his voice with a measure of nonchalance that he’s studied and knows how to emulate. “Just kid stuff.”

“Hmm,” she says, as if she doesn’t believe him, but he can see in her eyes that she does.

“How’s Peter?” Roy asks, knowing that asking about her on-again-off-again boyfriend will definitely steer the conversation away from himself.

He’s right, though after ten minutes of ranting, he can’t decide if he had made a good choice or not.

Mr. Wilson exits the back room as Theresa is winding down, and thankfully Madame Christmas calls him so he doesn’t have to extricate himself.

“Mr. Wilson says he can’t teach you any more,” Madame Christmas says with no preamble as Roy steps into the room.

Roy knew that had to be the case, but his heart still sinks at the confirmation. Disappointment and frustration rattle against one another in his chest.

“Okay,” he says, walking up to her desk and leaning forward against it. His fingers tap a rhythm on the surface. “Did he leave any names of other tutors?”

“No,” Madame Christmas says, and Roy blows out a breath as the frustration temporarily wins out. Before Roy can make any sort of annoyed comment, she continues. “He says you should look into studying alchemy.”

“Alchemy?” he echoes, straightening and looking at her. He doesn’t know why he bothers; her face is always the same.

“He says you have the aptitude.”

“We discussed the theories,” Roy says slowly, frowning and dropping his eyes to the desk again as he remembers. “I’ve written some papers on the basic foundational research.”

“Apparently that was enough for him to make the recommendation.”

When Roy looks up, she’s holding a folded piece of paper in her hands.

“You don’t _need_ a letter of recommendation, he says, but it helps. Especially for someone like you. Like us. Someone with no connections.”

“It’s expensive,” Roy says slowly, but his eyes are fixed on the paper. dangling from his aunt’s fingers. He can’t help it. The promise of knowledge, knowledge unknown to most of the population, is seductive.

“I have money, Roy,” Madame Christmas says, like it’s not even a question. “Do you want to study alchemy?”

Roy had never considered it before that moment. It had never occurred to him as an option in all the times his mind spun out about _what_ he would do and _how_.

But in the course of one conversation, since the barest suggestion had entered the air around him, he had wanted it more fiercely than he had wanted anything in his life.

“Yes,” he whispers.

“Alright,” Madame Christmas says, slapping the letter onto the desk. “Let’s find an alchemist.”

* * *

 _“Berthold is very secretive,”_ Roy had been warned. _“Even by alchemical standards. You need to be patient.”_

 _“If you get too bored, you can always come back,”_ Jamie had promised, hugging him tightly.

 _“If you get too_ boring, _you can always come back, too,”_ Theresa had quipped, cuffing him lightly on the side of the head before hugging him too.

 _“I’ll write,”_ Roy had promised, allowing himself to be hugged and petted and kissed by all the ladies that had been as close to siblings as he would ever have.

 _“You’d better!”_ Agnes had screeched.

He smiles as he approaches the humble cottage at the end of the drive. There’s a river close by. He can hear its burbling from here, though he can’t see it.

The cottage is a long walk from town; the tavern owner had offered to drive him when Roy stopped to ask for directions. He had declined, even though the owner’s daughter was doing her best to look like she was brushing his arm by accident, and she mentioned that she knew how to drive, too. A wink and a phrase that he knew would sound more like flirting than he really meant made her blush and stammer, giving him the chance he needed to lift his hand and thank them for the direction.

Growing up in the city, he had little experience with the kind of vast nature he saw here. Once the small town was out of sight, there was nothing in view but trees, rolling hills, and fields of crops. As he walked he saw some sheep, a horse, and even a cow. He had read about all these things, but it was different to _see_ the sheer scope of a tree that he knew had to be a hundred years old, shading a broken wheelbarrow and a few chickens who looked like they didn’t appreciate the relief from the sun. It was different to realize just how _large_ a cow truly was, how _green_ the plants were when they flourished away from the settling smog of the city.

And just as importantly, walking meant he would be alone. He would be free to breathe and just absorb the world without interaction, without comment. He wasn’t sure how often he would have this opportunity during his alchemical training. He didn’t know _what_ to expect, so he tried to soak in what might be his last free moments.

When he knocks on the door, he’s ready for anything.

Anything, perhaps, except for what greets him when the door pulls open.

“Hello?” says a girl who looks about his age. She looks at his face, then down at his traveling coat, the suitcase in his hand. The smallest furrow of her brows is the only indication of a frown that doesn’t reach her mouth.

“Hello,” he says, smiling with the clamor of the girls in his ears to _make a good impression._ “I didn’t know there would be a pretty lady here to greet me! Roy Mustang.”

He’s standing too close to her to bow properly, but he dips his head at least. When he looks up, her face is unchanged. Except — maybe the furrow in her brow has been replaced with a tightness in her eyes.

Not what he had been expecting. Usually that’s enough to make a girl smile, even if she rolls her eyes as she does so. This girl looks completely unmoved as she nods her head in some facsimile of a greeting and steps back from the door.

“I’ll show you to your room. Father is studying.”

“Excellent,” he says, following her into the cottage. It’s small, worn, but tidy and comfortable. He only catches a glimpse of a living area and a small dining nook before they’re in a hallway.

“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she says, twisting the knob to reveal a room neatly made up but otherwise bare. “You can unpack and get comfortable.”

“Thank you, Miss Hawkeye,” he says, and his eyes won’t leave her. She looks both older than she should, and far too young. Long hair the color of parchment gilded by the golden light of the slanting sun. Warm brown eyes that never meet his, casting around the room before settling on the doorknob just behind him. A thin sweater that looks handmade, the collar of another shirt poking unevenly out of the top.

Suddenly everything the girls had ever said about _chemistry_ and _connection_ and _just knowing, Roy, you just know!_ slots into a place in his mind that makes sense. It’s not logical, and there’s absolutely no reasoning behind it, but he wants to make her smile. He wants to see if the tightness in her eyes will disappear when she laughs. He wants it with such an immediate and strong ache that he isn’t sure what to do with it.

“You’re welcome, sir,” she says, like she is completely unaware of the fact that she’s just upset the balance of his mind and forced him to reevaluate several things he had previously disregarded as silly notions.

“Just Roy,” he says, grinning and winking, because falling into predictable patterns is all he has right now.

And he _really_ wants her to smile.

But she doesn’t smile. She nods, distracted, still not looking at him, and leaves.

Roy closes the door after her and stares at the doorknob for a moment.

 _“You’ll know what I mean one day, Roy,”_ Diana had said. _“One day you’ll meet someone and the room will stop moving, the sun will stop shining, and nothing will matter more to you in that moment than every little thing the person does.”_

 _“Love at first sight?”_ he had said skeptically, dropping more ice into her glass. _“Come on, D.”_

 _“It’s not love,”_ she had insisted, taking a drink and sucking one of the ice chips into her mouth. Roy saw it flash between her teeth, behind her pink-painted lips, before she crunched it with a horrible sound that everyone hated but her. _“It’s not love, Roy. Please. But it’s_ attraction _. There’s something there that you want, and you don’t know what it is, but your body does.”_

_“Please don’t talk about the birds and the bees again. Madame Christmas says I can’t drink, even if there’s a very good reason.”_

_“I won’t,”_ she had promised, looking nonplussed and taking another drink. Another crunch of ice. _“Not everything is about sex, you dirty little boy.”_

_“You said—“_

_“I said_ attraction,” she had interrupted, flicking him in the nose before he could move his face away. The motion hit a bone and tingled, making his eyes water. He rubbed it with annoyance. “ _Attraction is not sex, and it’s not love. It lights up your whole body and makes you feel alive. It’s the most wonderful feeling, to be so completely at someone’s mercy.”_

_“That doesn’t sound wonderful at all.”_

“ _You’ll know what I mean,”_ she concludes. _“And you’ll be absolutely hopeless when it happens.”_

_“Hey!”_

_“Everyone is, the first time. You’ll figure it out. You’re a smart boy.”_

Roy closes the door, but his fingers linger on the knob, tapping absently. He has the terrible feeling that Diana had been right, on every point.

* * *

Berthold Hawkeye is the last person Roy would have suspected of researching fire alchemy. He had met several alchemists in Central before he and Madame Christmas had decided on Master Hawkeye. _All_ of them seemed more likely to hold the secrets of fire than the pale man who sat behind a desk and eyed Roy over his glasses like he didn’t have the energy to do anything else.

It had been the fire that had cinched the decision for Roy, once again drawn by the irresistible desire to know something that was so rare most _alchemists_ didn’t even believe it existed. Madame Christmas had tried to convince him to study under one of the alchemists in Central, or even one of the ones they had traveled to meet. But in the end, Roy submitted to the most basic of human instincts: gravitation toward the flame.

He didn’t have the chance to actually meet Master Hawkeye before signing the contract and sending the advance payment. He lived so far outside the city, and Madame Christmas couldn’t leave the bar unattended. So she had handed him enough pocket money for a return journey when she took him to the train station.

 _“You’re a smart boy, but you’re stubborn,”_ she had said, fixing his collar even though it didn’t need to be fixed. _“If he’s dangerous, get on the first train to Central. If I find out that you’ve been murdered against my express instructions, I will be very angry.”_

 _“We can’t have that,”_ Roy had said, then rolled his eyes and _promised_ when she insisted that he do so.

But Madame Christmas had nothing to worry about, and Roy knew that almost from the moment he laid eyes on the mysterious Master Hawkeye. He’s absolutely certain that the man is incapable of hurting anything aside from insects and, accidentally, himself.

In fact, he is more concerned about the fact that he’s been here for months without learning any fire alchemy at all. The first few weeks had been introductory work, of course. Roy had read everything in the Central Library about alchemy, but any books or research with actual transmutation circles were unavailable to anyone but state alchemists. His knowledge was all theoretical, but so thorough that when he watched Master Hawkeye draw a simple circle on the paper, it looked almost familiar. Like knowing the shape of something not by looking at it, but by seeing the ragged edges of the hole as it had been torn away.

He soared through the introductory circles almost faster than he himself could comprehend. It was like speaking, like walking, like _breathing._ It was as if this thing he had hardly known by more than theory a year ago had actually been a part of his body all along.

Master Hawkeye smiled, giving him more and more and _more_ until he had mastered all the basics. Until he knew the subtle differences between circles for solids, liquids, and gases. Which runes stabilized the chaotic elements of liquid and gas, and which runes convinced the unmoving structure of earth to shift. He became intimate with chemical compounds, understanding more with every correction, and slotting in what he had already known into the framework Master Hawkeye was building.

But now, he has learned all the basics. He has memorized dozens of circles, and he can extrapolate dozens more with a little thought, based on what he knows. He is _ready,_ but still Master Hawkeye will not teach him. He keeps running Roy through exercises of creating new circles by guesswork and research, then checking them against the established ones. Writing about the differences and why the established circle is better than the one he created in ten minutes.

Sometimes he writes about why _his_ circle is better, and Master Hawkeye tries to look stern, but Roy can read his face. He can see the spark of interest in his eyes, and he knows that the older man will be double-checking his circle against dozens of books when he retires to his study. He knows, because sometimes Master Hawkeye tells him the next day that he was right, and instructs him to save his essay to publish when he’s finished his training.

“No one will publish you yet, but they will,” Master Hawkeye promises over dinner. “Your arguments are strong, even when you’re incorrect. When you’re correct, you’re irrefutable.”

Master Hawkeye is always direct with his praise, which Roy appreciates even as he knows that it’s not conventional, not _polite._ For whatever reason, society has seemed to agree that dancing around what you’re trying to say is much more appropriate than just coming out with it. And while Roy can operate fine in those environments, it’s nice to sit at a table and just have a direct conversation.

“Thank you,” he says, watching his fork so that his eyes aren’t drawn to the place they always try to go when he isn’t paying attention.

“We need more good researchers,” Master Hawkeye says. “Too many alchemists join the military, using their knowledge to destroy rather than create.”

“Practical and theoretical aren’t mutually exclusive,” Roy argues.

“The military makes sure they are,” Master Hawkeye says, and there’s an edge to his voice that Roy recognizes at once as a warning. He backs off with a shrug and an easy smile.

“This is delicious,” he says, changing the subject and allowing a glance toward the magnetic corner of the table. Light hair, quick fingers.

“Thank you,” Miss Hawkeye says.

He wonders what he will have to do to make her smile.

* * *

Roy is handed two gifts almost at once, boons from the universe in the midst of the oppressive August heat.

First — Master Hawkeye _finally_ teaches him fire transmutation. Roy had had to write three different essays on the implications of fire alchemy, and defend them to an uncharacteristically stubborn Master Hawkeye, before the man relented.

The first essay outlined the benefits of fire transmutation to society, including its uses and possible safeguards against reasonable accidents.

The second outlined exactly what happened to different materials when met with flames of varying heat, or extreme heat from proximity to flame. Combustion, smolder, pyrolysis, disintegration, and so forth. Wood, plant matter, and flesh had been required subjects. Roy was to select another three on top of those.

The third essay had resulted in an argument so heated that Roy was _certain_ Master Hawkeye would send him home. It outlined the implications of fire alchemy as a weapon, with a required section about ethics. Roy had argued in his essay that it _could_ be ethically used as a weapon, with certain parameters, and Master Hawkeye had staunchly disagreed.

In the end, Roy had relented and revised his essay, even though he assumed it was a wasted effort, since Master Hawkeye would send him back to Central anyway. Because, he had to admit as he marked through the offensive paragraphs, Master Hawkeye did have a point. Roy’s argument was based on a morally neutral person being the arbiter of such a power, and while that was a fine debating point, it was not practical. There was no such thing as a truly morally neutral person. Everyone had bias.

Master Hawkeye had read his essay, searched Roy’s face, then nodded once before drawing a circle and pushing it across the desk.

 _“You cannot create flame where there is none,”_ he had said, _“but you can hold the flame, the moment it comes to be. This circle is the beginning of everything.”_

Even before he has fully absorbed the fierce satisfaction from this first gift, he is given the second: Riza’s name. Not a smile, not yet, but it’s _something._

She yells at him with a ferocity he never would have guessed she contained. He had assumed that she had inherited her father’s even temperament, his unruffled quietude and studious nature. But what he sees that afternoon takes his breath away and destroys that assumption in one fell stroke.

He thinks he should be irritated, unsettled, unbalanced. But he isn’t. He is intrigued, curious.

He wonders about her like he wonders about fire. And each day after that, he learns something new about Master Hawkeye’s research of flame, but Riza remains a mystery. He tries to talk with her, flirt with her, argue with her, but nothing gets a reaction. He gets not even the barest hint of what had caused her eruption that day, and he cannot replicate it.

Roy almost thinks it had been a fluke, and that she really is just a quiet girl who is happy to keep house for her fragile father and his only student.

Almost.

Until he runs into her on a midnight walk, and she _talks_ to him, the darkness clinging to her skirts and elbows with an intimacy that makes him swallow and chastise his wandering mind.

Well, she snaps at him more than she talks to him, but that’s something. That’s evidence of possibility, and he watches her stalk back to the cottage with something like a smile on his face.

* * *

Walking with Riza quickly becomes the best part of his days at the cottage. He looks forward to every blizzard, because he knows that is when he will find her. The blanket of new snow combines with the shadows that stick to their shoes, and it creates an environment careful enough that she will speak.

Mostly she listens, but he can prod her into responses, into sharing her thoughts, though she always seems wary. He memorizes the way her eyes catch the light when she looks at him. The way her brows come together when she thinks. He thinks that the color of her hair is printed onto his soul somehow. The way she narrows her eyes and chews her lip when she’s thinking is more interesting than any research. He watches the tightness ease away from her expressions as they talk and wants to reach out and _feel_ that it is gone, but he doesn’t.

Because she is his teacher’s daughter, and he doesn’t have to be a genius to know that that would be a _bad idea._

 _“What’s life without risk?”_ Brianna would say, but he shakes his head. He cannot risk this alchemy when he’s barely begun. There will be time. And maybe in time, she will see it too, instead of looking like she wants to disappear when he does anything kind.

She hasn’t said anything to make him believe that _this_ is a lost cause, so he holds out hope. He will not press her beyond her comfort, careful to edge away from the flirting that was his defense mechanism and clearly made her uncomfortable. He will not push her, but he cannot keep his eyes from taking her in, cannot keep his mind from spinning, cannot keep his heart from pounding harder when her lips twist into something like a smile.

He is not strong enough to deprive himself of these things unless she makes it clear that she doesn’t wish to be in his company. He worries that he won’t see it if she does, as deep as he is in this supposedly wonderful thing (he thinks Diana did not share all the information required to make that assessment). He fears that she wishes he would go away, and he cannot see it.

He is stubborn, he knows, but he _hopes_ this is steadfastness rather than bullheadedness. He hopes _,_ but there is no real way to know, and that bothers him. Ultimately, that is what keeps his hands at his sides, keeps his eyes to the trees and sky when she looks at him. That is what keeps him skirting the barest edge of what he could defend as _completely normal_ if he was questioned.

Until one night, during the last heat wave of the summer. He’s heady with success, having mastered one of the more complicated fire transmutation circles, and he’s flirting a little more shamelessly than he had been before. The words keep slipping out of his mouth before he quite lets them, but Riza keeps dipping her head so he’s not entirely sure of her reaction. He feels drunk on his own achievements, and he knows he should probably go inside before he embarrasses himself. He knows he should, but he doesn’t.

And when he sees something dark on the back of her neck, his hand is moving before he gives it permission. Instinct moves him to brush away the stray insect, but his fingers meet only skin, warm and sticky with sweat and humidity.

It’s the first time he’s actually touched her, but he doesn’t realize it at first because he’s confused. Because the black thing should have _moved_ when he pushed against it, but it _didn’t._

And then he sees the shape of it, the horribly familiar peek of runes inside the double-lined circle that captures a flame. _It doesn’t create, only holds it in place,_ his brain supplies, clearly having no idea of the gravity of the situation.

“What _is_ that?” he breathes, staring at the ink under his fingers that does not move, does not smudge. The ink that is permanent on her skin.

Darkness covers Riza’s face as her hand pulls away the tie that had held her hair messily off her neck. It falls over his hand, cool and damp, and he pulls away without thinking. Humidity is thick in the air, but not as thick as the dawning horror thudding through Roy’s heart.

 _“My research is well hidden,”_ Master Hawkeye had said once, off-handed.

Well hidden.

_Well hidden._

Anger slams over the horror. He asks her why, _why,_ but she won’t say anything. Her eyes meet his, and the fear and resignation in them is so prominent that he wonders how he had ever missed it before. He can see it now, patterned backwards onto every interaction. So much a part of her that he had never thought to pull it away and _think of it_.

The world slows down as his mind speeds up. It reminds him of tiny details, little things that hadn’t caught his attention at the time, even as some part of him filed them away. They hadn’t _mattered_ before, but now they matter more than anything.

Because now, in a moment, the picture of Master Hawkeye in his mind has been completely changed. A sketch of runes on tracing paper that is suddenly dropped onto a different circle entirely, changing the context and changing _everything._

Master Hawkeye, calm, collected, studious, and always tired.

Master Hawkeye, barely acknowledging Riza despite everything she did for him, every day. Despite the fact that he has obligated this secret onto her, and should treat her with appreciation and possibly even _reverence._

But it’s not only that. It is not cruelty, not exactly — not in the way Roy would have thought of cruelty. But it _is_ cruelty, all the same. It did not lay in anything that Roy could put a finger on, but in the spaces between, in the man’s apparent inability to see what he was doing to his daughter.

His cruelty is in his distraction, and his trust that the affection he gave was exactly what she needed. His cruelty is in the fact that he does not seem capable of seeing her as a person of her own, one who needs to live a life of her own choosing.

Riza is chained to the cottage by love and loyalty for a man who smiles at her on her birthday and tattoos dangerous secrets on her skin.

So when she asks him if he is surprised, he realizes that he isn’t. He finds himself in the place of being completely wrong about something without actually being caught off guard. Because he had all the information, but he hadn’t bothered to put it together.

And that makes him angrier than he can say.

When Riza goes in, Roy keeps walking. Thinking, shifting his views, making decisions. He is beginning to see the end of his training coming into view, and he weighs leaving against staying. He weighs the unshakeable _something_ that may be only in his own mind against the very tangible reality of doing something with this research that Master Hawkeye would be happy to let disappear before it did any good to anyone.

He knows, despite how much he debates it in his mind, that he will stay. He _must_ stay, and finish his training. Without completed training, he is nothing in the eyes of the world. He can do nothing, achieve nothing, change nothing.

He wants to make this country better, and he knows just how he’s going to do it. Perhaps it’s arrogance; perhaps it’s folly. He is young, after all. He knows that, but it seems so clear to him. He has to move forward, pursuing his dream.

He has to.

* * *

Months pass as he finishes his training. He feared that Riza would withdraw from him after the night he discovered the ink on her neck, but she didn’t. In contrast, every walk together brings her further and further outside of the quiet agreement he now realizes was her armor against a father that hardly seemed to care.

She grows more animated, asking questions and poking holes in his arguments, and Roy starts to worry that what he had simply dismissed as _attraction_ is becoming something darker and much more frightening.

Riza holds her own as they debate politics and ethics, which is astounding to him since she only seems to know as much as he tells her. She takes his foundational explanations and extrapolates with chilling accuracy, unknowingly parroting the arguments of philosophers and politicians he’s read in his journals.

She’s _smart,_ she’s well spoken, and she doesn’t back down from him. Not even when he forgets to be polite and says things that would make the floor girls smack him upside the head.

It’s a combination of traits that makes him pinch the bridge of his nose and take a deep breath, reminding himself of all the reasons why he shouldn’t take her face in his hands and map the arguments on her lips before she speaks them. Because he _shouldn’t._ He absolutely shouldn’t.

But Roy has never been well governed by things like _shouldn’t,_ so most of the arguments based on that foundation seem insignificant in those moments. Like expectations that are not his, they fall away when he finds himself short of breath and she looks so _alive_ in the moonlight and shadow.

He tells himself he is young, and she is the only girl near his age.

He tells himself she is his teacher’s daughter.

He tells himself she has shown no sign of reciprocating his feelings (though she hasn’t rebuffed them, his brain is quick to point out).

But.

All of these arguments pale in comparison to the warmth of her eyes, the way she folds her arms when she thinks she’s won a debate, the way the wrinkles around her nose betray a smile before her mouth does.

The only thing that pulls him up short, the one argument that sobers him when he starts to think he’s going to do something he will regret, is that she is _trapped._ He has every opportunity laid out before him; he could take his education and do any of a thousand things.

Riza has only her father, and the research scarred across her skin that she cannot touch. She has no means of escape, no education, no skills.

She is desperate to be free. Now that he knows to look for it, he can see it in the set of her chin, in the tightness around her eyes. She does not want to be here, and she is looking for any way out.

 _Any_ way.

If he kisses her, if he even _hints_ at the fact that he wants to take her with him when he leaves, he thinks she will accept. He _knows_ she will. She will go with him, even if she doesn’t feel a fraction of what he feels as they walk together by the river. Worse yet, she might _believe_ that she likes him for more than his value as a means of escape, and she might then wake up one day with the horrible realization that she doesn’t feel anything of what she thought she did.

And Roy is not one for sentiment. He generally can take or leave the affection that the floor girls and his aunt bestow upon him. He would not be much bothered by someone telling him that they don’t like him as much as they thought they did.

But if he were to think that Riza echoed any of the shivering feelings in his heart, if he were to let himself think that, and suddenly it disappeared?

It didn’t bear thinking about.

He thinks he is probably selfish, but he cannot deny the pounding dread in his heart. If she feels this way too, truly, then there is time. They are young, and there is time. He can help her to escape this lonely cottage, and he can give her space. He can watch and see if she grows to feel the same way, or if she is satisfied to simply be free.

He cannot escape the certainty that acting on his feelings _now_ would only destroy any possible chance of future happiness.

And that thought keeps his hands in his pockets, though it cannot keep his eyes from drawing in every smile, every frown, every glare. It keeps his breaths measured, though it cannot keep his mind clear.

So when Riza pushes up on her toes, his name escaping her in a way that he had only dreamed it one day might, he almost falters. His hands grip her shoulders and almost move to her arms, her waist. He has an itch to feel the shape of her under his fingers that is only forestalled by the screeching call of _recklessness._

Her mouth is so close to his own that he breathes in the scent of her, and it almost undoes him. He almost caves to the need to feel her lips against his, to see how she moves against him, to taste his name on her tongue.

But he stutters something that, blessedly, makes her draw away. He doesn’t even remember what he says until later, only that it pulled her far enough away that he could breathe again. That he could think about something other than the way her breath moved across his skin.

He has time, he tells himself. They are young. He has time.

But time is fickle, Roy soon learns. And there is always less of it than he thinks.

* * *

When Master Hawkeye gets sick, it takes Roy by surprise. He is still trying to measure Riza’s reaction to his clumsy attempt at saving them both when suddenly their days are plummeted into nothing but caring for a dying man.

He watches Riza killing herself for a man that has done worse than nothing for her, and he cannot hold himself back. Not even when he tells himself it’s a family matter, and he doesn’t really know anything about those, so he should stay out of it. He should go to the military and get his certification, like he planned. He should start climbing the ranks, because that’s the only way to start the journey toward his dream.

But he stays, because Riza is panic and grief embodied, and he thinks that if he were to leave now he would have to cut out his own heart and leave it behind.

He can’t hold her when she cries, but he pushes her into her room and sleeps outside her door to make sure she rests. He pulls blankets over her when she falls asleep too tired to do it for herself, talks to the doctor, pays for medications out of his rapidly-dwindling pocket money. He brushes hair out of her face and whispers promises of escape when she sleeps, feeling both relieved and guilty when Master Hawkeye finally dies.

“Contact me if you need anything,” he says at her father’s funeral, handing her a folded piece of paper and wishing he could do more. He had applied for his certification, expecting a response in a couple of weeks so he could help Riza finish anything that needed to be done after the funeral while he waited. But the military had responded in two days and demanded his presence within the week, so he had very few options. “Anything.”

“Actually,” she says, chewing on her lip and looking at the headstone with red-rimmed eyes. “There’s one thing.”

And she takes him back to the cottage. She tells him to turn around, and he’s terrified when he hears the sound of cloth against skin. Terrified until she says, in a small voice that is somehow strong,

“I’m trusting you, Roy. I’m trusting you with my father’s research.”

And when he turns, a lifetime of work covers the dips and bumps of her skin like an imperfectly perfect canvas. Her shoulder blades jut out in the middle of clarifying notes; the ridges of her spine bisect at least three different circles. The ink varies in shades, clearly constructed over countless sessions and added in overlapping, concentric, circles.

He wants to reach out and touch it. The beauty of alchemy overlaid on the skin he had wanted nothing more than to learn the shape of. But the terrible crime of neglect whispers in every line, making his heart pull away in revulsion even as his mind leans forward in eager curiosity. This is what Master Hawkeye had sacrificed his daughter’s future for, and it seems so paltry in comparison to what Riza could, should, be.

“I think I know almost all of these circles,” he says, finally, knowing that his silence could be misconstrued as almost anything. “Let me get a paper, and I’ll copy the ones I don’t know. I’ll memorize them, and burn the notes.”

“Alright,” she says softly, and she doesn’t move until he lifts the swirling lines from her flesh, scrawling them on a less beautiful, but more humane, surface.

“Thank you,” he says, keeping his eyes on the paper because he can’t bear to look at her.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and she puts a hand on his shoulder for the barest moment before she leaves him.

He doesn’t think he will ever see her again. There is too much between them, both the things that happened and the things left unsaid. He had thought they would have time, but he isn’t so sure anymore. He will try to find her in a few years, but he is less certain than he was that she will _let_ him find her.

He cannot be the only one to feel this anchor of jumbled emotions and experiences, and she has enough to weigh her down, he thinks, without that.

He would not blame her if she wanted to cut it free.

* * *

Roy goes to the academy the day after Master Hawkeye’s funeral. He doesn’t quite know exactly what to feel about the death of his teacher, so he is grateful for the distraction. If nothing else, his time at the academy helps distance him from the woman who had distracted and captivated him more thoroughly than he could have ever believed was possible.

Far more thoroughly than any of the floor girls would have had him believe.

 _“There are always girls,”_ Beth had said.

 _“If a girl doesn’t like you, just wait for the next one,”_ Daisy had advised. “ _You won’t be waiting long with a face like that.”_

 _“It won’t only happen once,”_ Theresa had said, poking him in the forehead. _“You’ll think, ‘oh, this is so real. This must be the one.’ But don’t listen to that, Roy. Don’t listen to that romantic bull— nonsense.”_ She had coughed delicately then, and Roy had done his best to look like he had no idea what a swear word was, despite having heard all of them and more before the age of four. _“The heart is changeable. Just remember that, when it feels like it’s breaking. It’s not breaking, only changing. Wait it out.”_

He tries to believe them. Tries to believe that this magnetism to Riza will fade when he isn’t seeing her every day.

And it does — mostly.

He is busy with training, meeting the other new recruits, and reading news from the Ishvalan Border War. There’s a rumor that Fuhrer Bradley will be taking some decisive action soon, and he is thrown into preparations for an order that may never come.

Most of the other recruits are little more than a name and a face, but one man appears in his marksmanship class and never disappears.

“Maes Hughes,” he says, holding out a hand with a grin. “What are you in for?”

“Roy Mustang. State alchemist,” Roy says, fiddling with the silver chain attached to a pocket watch. It had just been issued earlier that day, and he was still growing used to the weight in his pocket.

“Wow,” Hughes says with a low whistle. “What’s your thing? Metal? Stone? Air?”

“Flame.”

“I’m sticking close to you, Roy,” Maes declares, throwing an arm over his shoulder and ignoring Roy’s raised eyebrows. “I have a good feeling about you.”

“Is that so.”

“My girlfriend told me to make friends in high places. Her name is Gracia. She’s _amazing.”_

“Ah.”

“And state alchemist is equivalent to Major,” Hughes continues, “so that definitely applies.”

“And why should I be friends with _you?”_ Roy questions, but Hughes just laughs like Roy had told a hilarious joke. His glasses catch the light, reflecting the sun into Roy’s eyes for a split second.

“And you’re funny!” Hughes exclaims with obvious delight. “We’re going to get along great.”

Weirdly, he’s right. Roy meets a lot of people in his short time at the academy before getting deployed to the front lines, but he wouldn’t call any of them friends except for the strange man who can’t shut up about his girlfriend.

They’re deployed at the same time — a fact that Roy is grateful for. He’s read order #3066, and he doesn’t think he'll like what he’s going to find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you are enjoying Roy's story so far. Next week will be the rest of his POV before we jump back to 1920 for good. :o
> 
> Thank you for reading! Reviews are very appreciated. <3


	9. Part 4 - Chapter 9

**— 1905 —**

War is gruesome, Roy knows, but this is a slaughter.

He follows orders. He uses Master Hawkeye’s alchemy in the express ways that the man had declared it should not be used, and while that alone is not enough to make him pause, the fact that he _agrees_ with the man does.

But he’s in too deep now. He has no connections, no way to gather enough clout to make a difference without the esteem that the military ranks would grant him. He has a plan, and every day that passes makes him cling more tightly to it like it’s the only thing he has left. He tells himself that he isn’t trapped because he _chose_ this, but the claustrophobic feeling presses closer and closer on his heart with every snap of his fingers.

He thinks this might _be_ the only thing he has left, since there is no room for morality here. There is no room for justice. There is only The Plan, and the hope that enough of him will be left after this war to make any difference to anyone, including himself.

By the time he sees Riza again, she is Sergeant Hawkeye, and the scrape of her father’s name against his tongue is something he has to get used to.

This is not what he wanted for her when he wished for her escape.

This is not what he wanted for her _at all._

But she has never been a withering damsel, and he knows that. He _knows_ that, and she proves it the first time she drags him out of an abandoned building, screaming insubordination as she reminds him of the fact that they’re _all going to die_ unless he _does something._ She proves it again and again, with every shot fired that kills someone about to kill them.

She’s made of grit and iron, and it’s as reassuring as it is strange to see her like this. But the strangeness wears away after a few months, and then it is only reassuring. He would not have chosen this for her, but the glimpses of life he had caught in her eyes on their walks together are nothing in comparison to the glare of survival in her eyes now. She is exhausted, heartsick, hopeless — like everyone must be — but she is _alive._ She speaks without apology, and she is no longer afraid to take up space.

He hates that the war has brought it out of her, hates that there is anything positive that comes of this terrible thing, but he cannot regret the focused calm on her face when she’s scanning the horizon on watch. He cannot regret the small flashes in her eyes of relief, maybe even happiness, when they return from a mission with no casualties because of her perfect shot. The flashes are mixed with guilt and a terrible weight, but they are there. There is something in her that is finally stretching to life as she finds a way to serve and protect — if not justice, at least the people close by.

And she’s _good._ She is the best sniper on the front lines, and Roy finds himself in the position of arguing other officers down when they try to switch her to a different team. He trusts her to keep him alive. And even more than that, he can focus on the alchemy if she is there, rather than getting distracted by constantly trying to watch his own back. When they’re together, the casualties are minimal, and finally the other officers stop trying to move her.

What he doesn’t tell them is that when Hawkeye is with him, the Ishvalans suffer less. He doesn’t know how they would feel about that, and he doesn’t want to find out.

If he can focus on the alchemy, if he can focus on the exact motions and gestures, he can precisely control the heat of the flame within a ten degree margin.

And he knows the effects of flame on flesh.

He’s written an extensive essay on it, the casual wording now making him shudder even as he reviews the facts of it in his mind. He memorizes exactly what he must do to kill _immediately_. He becomes a machine that murders without pain, and he thinks darkly that he should feel some pride in that achievement — but he doesn’t. Because he’s not like Kimblee; he cannot take satisfaction in this. He does it because it’s as close to moral as he can be, because it keeps within reach whatever it is that he hopes to escape the war with.

And it’s the only thing that staves off the nightmares for one more day, one more day. Every time he is distracted when he unleashes the flame, the resulting screams absorb into some part of him that only awakens when he tries to rest. Every time, he locks himself down harder, demands more of himself, of his focus. He does everything he can do to be _better,_ with a desperation born of anger and sleepless nights and wondering if there’s anything _better_ left inside his chest.

And Hawkeye is always there, just behind his shoulder. Missions, injuries, stuttering breaths, horrifying nightmares — they pass a lifetime together in the long years of the war-which-isn’t-a-war. The atrocities of battle and death make it easy for him to fold up the childish feelings he had cultivated in the air swept clean by a river and a summer breeze. He packs them away into a place untouched by friends that bleed out before a medic reaches them, untouched by the weight of injustice and responsibility. He keeps them safe, to press into and remember when things seem hopeless and the darkness seems overwhelming. There was light once. There were smiles, debates, and breath against his lips. There _were._ Once.

Hawkeye is under his command now, so he keeps the past in the past. There is no point dwelling on it. Only brief moments of relief, reminding him of the good: a touchstone in the flame. He keeps on, her steadiness grounding him. Her pointed words interrupting his mind’s self-destructive spirals.

Until one day, when he is confronted with the very real possibility of this touchstone disappearing.

Days are spent on a mission that they barely escaped from, losing half their men. He is exhausted, angry, and on the edge of a place he _cannot_ go when he storms into base camp with Hawkeye’s limp body in his arms.

 _“Medic! Now!”_ he shouts, and his voice booms through the clearing like the whoosh of air before a flame. He hates the sound of his own voice, hates everything about the circles on his gloves, the heat of the air, the burns on his skin from standing too close to the flame that was supposed to keep them from suffering but _didn’t._

He hates everyone, and everything, except _her._

“What happened, Major?” the medic says as Roy approaches the awning that houses most of the man’s equipment.

He uncaps a bottle and shakes some of the clear liquid onto his hands. The sharp smell of alcohol fills the air before it’s blown away in the dry wind.

“She was stabbed,” Roy bites out, putting her on the cot in front of the medic. “Two days ago. It’s infected.”

There’s no need to ask where she was stabbed; the dressing cobbled together with scraps that everyone had managed to provide from their ruined supplies is messy and obvious.

“How long has she been unconscious?” the medic asks without looking up at him, pulling out a knife to begin cutting away clothes and gauze and anything that might stand between him and the wound that was killing her.

“A few hours,” Roy says. “But she’s been in and out of consciousness for most of the last day.”

 _“Don’t go in without me, Major,”_ she had said, eyes glassy with fever as she gritted her teeth against the pain. _“You can’t go in. It’s too dangerous.”_

 _“We have to complete the objective, or we can’t go back to base camp, sergeant,”_ he had argued. _“You need antibiotics.”_

 _“Sir,”_ she said, squinting at his face as if she was trying to keep it in focus. _“I’ll die here anyway if you die in the city. No one will be left to take me home — back — there.”_ She blinked rapidly, losing focus on his face and slumping back onto the pallet. _“Don’t go. You can’t — die. I won’t let you.”_

The last words had slipped out as her eyes closed, suddenly exhausted from the effort.

 _“I’m going, sergeant,”_ he had said, pulling his hand back when he found it reaching for hers. _“But I promise not to die.”_

She hadn’t regained consciousness since then.

He had thought that carrying her body as the life slipped out of her might be the beginning of some justice, for the lives he had taken. For a man who had killed so many, surely the universe would not have pity as he tried to save just one.

But a transport buggy had overtaken what was left of their team, giving them a ride back to base camp, and Hawkeye was still alive.

And he refuses to let her die _now._ The universe is cruel, but it is cruel like Master Hawkeye. It is neglectful and arbitrary. Man is cruel like Kimblee, watching death unfold with a smile that holds no shame. Roy knows both types of cruelty, and he would not bet against either one that Hawkeye would live through the night. He will hold her here with the determination and anger that crawls in his bones like the flames that are his inheritance.

The medic doesn’t say anything encouraging, and hardly looks him in the eye even when he talks to him. That could be a result of any of a million things, but Roy can’t think about any of them.

He stays at her side, watching her face for any sign of wakefulness, any evidence that the fever is reducing. When the medic says he’s done all he can, Roy has to grip the edge of the cot to keep from launching at him and demanding _more, anything_ because it isn’t rational and it wouldn’t accomplish anything. She’s been given antibiotics, and the medic has left a hanging bag of fluids to keep her hydrated as the fever burns her from the inside out and the desert burns her from the outside in.

Someone brings him a flimsy collapsible stool, but no one else approaches him and he doesn’t care. He hates all of them with a vitriol that he barely keeps behind his teeth and scares him with its intensity.

Hours pass with no change. He watches her chest rise and fall with more focus than he’s ever given to a book or a transmutation circle. He memorizes the different rhythms they take: the deep, the staggering, the shallow, the one that seems broken by a gasp. There is no pattern. There is nothing to analyze. There is nothing to _do._

The medic comes at some point to take the hanging bag, and Roy’s hand is fisted in the man’s uniform before his fingers can even graze her skin. His blood is rushing in his ears, adrenaline pounding through him in a desperate bid to do _something, anything._

“Alright, Major,” says a voice behind him that he barely registers as familiar. “You don’t want to do that. Let him go before the incident report gets messy.”

“She needs the fluids,” he spits, not looking behind him. The medic doesn’t meet his eyes, but he’s not fighting either.

“Corporal Gunner needs them more,” the voice says — Hughes, his brain realizes. He hadn’t been here when they left. “He’s been in the sun for two days with nothing.”

Hughes doesn’t tell him to take a deep breath. He doesn’t tell him to think about the implications of what he’s doing. He just states the facts in a calm voice that slips between the waves of fury and forces Roy’s fingers to relax.

“There we go. I’m sure the Major was startled, coming back from such a dangerous mission, medic. It won’t happen again.”

The medic just nods, and Roy registers somewhere on the insignificant periphery of his notice that he looks tired and annoyed. That makes Roy want to grab his uniform again and _shake him,_ but Hughes is pulling him back to the stool. He watches the medic slide the needle out from her skin, and it feels like giving up.

“Where are your gloves?” Hughes asks, derailing his train of thought. His voice is much quieter than it had been a moment ago, and it takes Roy too long to process the question.

“Coat,” he says, the word coming with far too much effort.

“Can I have them?”

Roy just nods. He doesn’t want to argue with Hughes, and his brain refuses to follow that line of logic when there are breaths to watch. Hughes reaches into his pocket and pulls out the gloves.

“I have watch in an hour,” is all he says before sitting on a stool next to Roy and falling silent.

It’s the quietest Roy has ever seen Hughes, either before or since. He doesn’t notice when Hughes leaves, but at some point he looks over and his friend isn’t there.

The camp grows quieter as night stretches into early morning, which Roy notices only dimly. The medic doesn’t come back. Hughes doesn’t come back either.

Roy sits next to the cot, completely still, as his brain spins out with dizzying speed. Memories, regrets, ideas, solutions, corrections, arguments, dreams that ache with the fear of loss.

He thought he had _time._

He thought _they_ had time.

His hand rests barely an inch from her face, but that inch stretches the width of Ishval. The width of _fraternization,_ the width of a grave. What do the rules matter if she’s dying? What good will it do to let her drift away, untethered by even the slightest human touch?

Roy cannot bring himself to let her die the way she seemed to have lived most of her life; ignored and used up until she was empty.

So with the camp quiet around him, with no one near enough to see in the starlit dark, he brushes his knuckles against her cheek. He feels tears sting his eyes as his other hand finds hers and rests on top of it. The ends of his fingers curl messily around hers, like he can protect her from this, from anything.

“You’re not alone, sergeant,” he whispers against the memories and fears. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

He lets his head hang, heavy and hot and full of too many thoughts.

“You shouldn’t have joined the military,” he says, unaware that _that_ is what was going to come out of his mouth until it was already in the air. “You should have found something safer.”

He shakes his head a little, his eyes stinging worse and his nose burning. He tries to laugh and gives up.

“We all have regrets, I guess. I should have—“ a tear falls, and he shakes his head again. “I should have done a lot of things differently, I think. If I had known…”

_If I had known you would join the military, I would have kissed you by the river while I had the chance. I would have put my heart in your hands and hoped you would have mercy._

Tears blur his vision and he sets his teeth against them.

“I’m not leaving you tonight. _You,_ stay alive. That’s —“ He swallows something hard and hot in his throat. “That’s an order, sergeant.”

He pulls his hand from her face when he hears the call to change watch, but can’t bear to let go of her hand. Hughes settles down next to him a few minutes later, his body blocking their hands from view, and doesn’t say anything.

Hawkeye wakes up in the morning, an hour after her fever breaks, and no one tells her how bad it was. She gives Roy a hard time for not sleeping when he had the chance, and he points out that he didn’t die when she was sure he would.

“I had to make sure you knew you were wrong, the instant you woke up,” he says, a lightness forced into his voice that he hopes she can’t hear. “I need an apology.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she says immediately, but he can see amusement behind the exhaustion that the fever left her with. “I’m glad you didn’t die. Keeping you alive is at least half of my job.”

Her voice is flat, and Roy loves how much she can convey with absolutely no intonation. He doesn’t know how she does it, but she can turn any statement into something that makes him _want_ to laugh. Laughter is beyond him most days, but even the desire for it makes him lighter.

“If I have any say in it, it’s going to be _most_ of your job when we get back from Ishval,” he says.

“Is that so, sir?” she hums.

Roy cuts her a sharp look, remembering.

_“I’ll have to make sure I hire someone to watch my six.”_

_“As it turns out, I’m a decent shot.”_

_“Is that an offer?”_

_“I think_ you _have to offer the job, major.”_

It had happened in the first year of the war, so perhaps she hadn’t—

But that smile is twisting her mouth, and he huffs out an annoyed breath. That makes her chuckle, a dry and labored sound but still in good humor.

“I didn’t forget, Major,” she says, eyes on the horizon.

“Good. I need you.”

“Yes, you do.” That flat voice again. It succeeds in making him smile this time.

“Get some rest, sergeant.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

The night before they hear that the war ends, the sun sets in an irresponsibly brilliant splash of color.

It’s arresting and undeniable, and Roy resents it for making him remember that there is beauty in the world when he’s about to destroy parts of it. The golden light that bathes the sand and swirls up the eroding walls of the deserted city is so close in shade to the color of flames — but so unlike it that he doesn’t even think of the comparison until later. It is constant, where flame flickers. It is calm, where flame is energy incarnate. It is soft, easing into shadow, where flame is harsh and bright.

The clouds are purple, and the shade seems familiar, though he can’t remember why. His eyes linger on the haze of heat on the horizon that distorts the cherry-red sun as he thinks of the purple. Snatches of sky are pale coral, bright and vivid against the clouds, and he remembers why the color is familiar.

“What’s so funny?” Hawkeye asks, coming up beside him and adjusting the strap of her gun on her shoulder. He can feel her eyes scanning, looking for the source of his amusement.

“I’m not laughing, sergeant,” he says, raising an eyebrow at her.

“I didn’t say you were laughing,” she counters, still looking at the sun, the city, the clouds — her eyes skipping from landmark to landmark.

He glances at her, watching how the gold lights her face, threads through her hair. It makes her look like _art,_ which is such a tired thing to say that Roy is glad there is no reason to ever say it out loud. Because it’s true, but it won’t _sound_ true when the words hit the air.

“Then how—“

“Your face,” she interrupts.

“My face.”

“Yes.”

“Care to elaborate, sergeant?”

“Is that an order, Major?”

“No,” he sighs, rolling his eyes. “Keep your secrets.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says, her voice conciliatory in the way that means she’s hiding how smug she feels. He resists the urge to _accidentally_ step on her foot.

“The color of the clouds,” he says after a moment, lifting a hand although there is no need. The clouds are _obvious._ “It reminded me of someone.”

“Hm?” she says, a noncommittal sound that doesn’t pull an answer out of him so much as opens a space for him to continue.

“One of the girls had a scarf that color, and it went missing for a week right before the holidays.”

“What happened to it?”

Roy had been expecting a quip or a jab about the girls, the bar, his aunt — and he’s caught a little off-guard by the genuine curiosity that fills her voice instead.

“She blamed me for it, of course.”

“How old were you?”

He has to think about that. His mind cycles through the girls in the memory, mapping the cast of faces against his age.

“Mmm, thirteen, thereabouts,” he finally decides.

“Prime age for stealing scarves, sir.”

“That’s what Rosamund said, too.”

She’s smiling, and it’s a rare smile with no weight behind it, no attempt to tuck it under something else. He doesn’t see those smiles often, and he can’t look away. She turns to look at him, and her eyes widen slightly when she catches him looking, but the surprise vanishes quickly and she doesn’t comment on it.

“Did you steal it, Major?” she asks, her voice a measured sternness, like she were questioning an enlisted man about what happened to the extra rations.

“No,” he says, breaking the eye contact to look back at the horizon. “It may surprise you to know that I was not the kind of boy to steal scarves.”

“It does seem like an awful lot of effort for you.”

“Yes, and— wait, what does that mean?” He narrows his eyes, snapping his head back to look fully at her again. The smile has turned into a smirk, and she shifts her gaze up to him.

“Only that you are very specific about which activities you put effort into,” she says, opening her eyes wide in feigned surprise. “It’s an admirable trait, I’m sure, Major. No energy wasted.”

“Hm,” he says, suspicious for good reason.

“I definitely wasn’t implying that you were lazy,” she adds.

“I’m not—“

“I know, sir,” she interrupts smoothly with that deadpan voice he never wants to live without. “No one would ever say that.”

“No one _would,”_ he mutters, wondering all of a sudden if anyone had, and then further wondering why he cared.

“It’s a beautiful sunset,” she says lightly, edging the confusing train of thought off its rails. “Looks like — the opposite of fire.”

“Yes,” he agrees, looking back at it. “It does.”

The next day, they run the mission. The only two other soldiers with them are killed because Roy was a half-second too late with the flame. Or because they were a half-second too slow with running, but his mind settles on the former. Blaming the dead is the coward’s way out, and he refuses to shed any responsibility.

He and Hawkeye are trudging back to base camp, heavy again with the new weight of death that had not settled onto their shoulders quite yet, when the news is shouted at them from a passing buggy.

Hawkeye doesn’t say a word after that, until she asks him to burn the research off her back. She says the words like she’s been thinking of them for a long time, and only the end of the war released them from whatever cage they had been kept in for safekeeping.

He agrees, because it is the right thing to do. And Roy Mustang may not have a lot of morals left — he may not be entirely sure what is left of him after everything he’s done — but this decision is as easy as blinking and as hard as digging a shallow grave in shifting sand.

This decision, he knows, is the first he makes as a man who has killed and survived. He doesn’t know what will happen in the aftermath, but he can let this choice set the tone for whatever comes next.

He will accept the honor and the weight of being the one to help Hawkeye set herself free from her father’s burden. He will make this first act one that does not further his own gain.

It is not atonement, but he hopes it is a new beginning.

Every instinct in him rebels against this; every particle of him flinches away from the idea of using the alchemy that made him a murderer against someone who has done nothing but seek his welfare for four long years. But he presses past his instincts, shoves the cringing pieces of him aside, in the same way he’s done for the whole war. At least this time, he tells himself, his instincts are wrong. At least this time, the end _will_ justify the means.

So he rehearses, he double-checks, he snaps a flame into the chips to start the fire, and knows by the time it takes for them to catch that the temperature is correct. Enough to burn the outer layers of skin, but not enough to do permanent nerve damage. Just enough to ruin the ink and make it incomprehensible.

He refers to the hazy picture of her tattoo in his memory, viewed only once four years ago, and tries to remember a localized area that he could burn that would make the rest of the tattoo impossible to interpret. By the time Hawkeye finishes her food, he’s decided on the size and scope, and dread turns to anger in his veins. Anger at the incomprehensibility of a dead man, but no matter the root, it makes the rest of his thoughts easier to brush away.

He looks at the tattoo again in her tent, scrutinizing and calculating the precise measurements. He won’t put her through any more pain than he has to, though he knows that burns are so painful and slow to heal that she likely won’t notice the difference of an inch or two. He doesn’t want to take the risk that she will.

But even the fortifying anger doesn’t hold up when Hawkeye is gasping and doubled over because of _him._ Because of _his hands._ He pulls off the ignition gloves as screams that only come out in the darkness start to fill his head. He cannot follow them now, not with Hawkeye half-naked and choking with stifled sobs. Her skin is grotesque with bubbling blisters, but he doesn’t let himself look away. He did that, and it is his horror to bear.

He helps her to lay down, holding her weight when she loses consciousness, rubbing ointment on with all the delicacy he can summon. He thinks his hands are shaking; he knows his voice is. But he will not stop moving, he will not allow the screaming darkness to win. Not yet.

Not until he’s sure she is asleep and her wound is bandaged. Not until he’s sure the horizon is clear, though the war is over and they’re less than half a day from base camp.

Not until he’s sitting by himself at the edge of camp with one of Hawkeye’s guns at his side, the ignition gloves still on the floor of her tent.

Then he cannot hold off the darkness anymore, and in a rare moment of uncertainty, he hopes that he made the right choice.

* * *

Within a week of his return from Ishval, Roy can tell that something is rotten in the government.

The days of idealism on the riverbank are long behind him, trampled under four years of a war that should have been — by any measure — an international crime. Abstract arguments and moral neutrality hold no weight in a system so rife with complications and bureaucracy that Roy can hardly keep his own _actions_ straight, much less their outcome.

When he had first read order #3066, he was appalled and confused at how something like _that_ could have been passed in any legal fashion.

After a month behind a desk, he understands completely, and it gives him a headache.

Paperwork piles up in front of him. Half of it is incomprehensible phrasing of simple requests and confirmations — phrasing that doubles back on itself in order to fit the structure required for the form. Sometimes, he realizes, the format is not _actually_ required anymore, because someone has changed the rule to be sensible. But everyone is so used to doing it this way that they continue in the vein they’ve started, baffling new staff until they get used to it too.

The senseless frustration makes him want to pull his hair out. Only conversations with Hawkeye — Warrant Officer Hawkeye, now — keep him sane in the maddening slog he finds himself embroiled in.

“There has to be a reason for all of this,” he says, rubbing the bridge of his nose and staring at the tottering stack of paperwork. “There has to be. No one would submit themselves to this _willingly.”_

“ _You_ did,” she points out, but at a deadly look from him she clears her throat and looks at the ceiling, graciously pretending that she hadn’t spoken at all.

“I knew red tape existed. I knew things would be needlessly complicated. But this is — is —“

“Madness, sir?”

_“Yes.”_

She’s silent, absently pulling a paper from the top of the stack and letting her eyes run down it.

“Request for supplies in the third-floor janitorial closet?” she asks.

“Is that what it is?” he asks wearily, dropping his head into his hands. “I stared at that paper for twenty minutes, Hawkeye. _Twenty minutes.”_

“You’re hopeless,” she says, but there’s a fondness in her tone that eases the tension in his muscles. “I’ll help you with the paperwork, sir.”

“That’s not the _point.”_

 _“_ I know,” she says, and the shrug is clear in her voice. “But if I do some of the paperwork, you’ll have more time to think about the point.”

He lifts his head and examines her face, trying to decide if she’s serious.

“No energy wasted, Colonel,” she says, and she is teasing but also serious. It’s a mix he knows well, and he relaxes into it.

“Thank you.”

“Of course, sir.”

With Hawkeye handling most of the irrelevant paperwork that lands on his desk, he has the time and energy to start following suspicious activity backward, trying to find the source. He always loses the trail at some point, but the more things he finds, the more confident he is that something _big_ is wrong.

He doesn’t write anything down, unsure who is involved since he doesn’t even know _what_ is happening. He talks with Hawkeye, hints at Hughes — though the man is about as subtle as a bag of bricks, and clinically incapable of taking a hint — but otherwise keeps his head down.

He tries to take advantage of civilian channels wherever possible, and it only takes one meeting with his aunt to officially-unofficially confirm what he had suspected for most of his youth. She sighs and mutters about subterfuge running in the family as she ruffles his hair and agrees to keep her ears open.

He calls them weekly, establishing a cover that no one will look too closely into. Mostly, he chats with the girls, who are always happy to give him advice and say outrageous things to try to get him in trouble at work. Hawkeye is far too amused with the development, but it’s the safest bet, so he can’t bring himself to stop.

Anyway, he likes the girls. Though he hadn’t missed them while he was gone, not as such, he finds that they fit around him just like they used to. He had assumed that they would be a part of his life that would stay in the past, but he is pleasantly surprised to find that is not the case. Though he is starkly changed from the boy he used to be, the girls don’t balk or act strange. They pinch his arm, cup his chin in delicate hands, and tut about how much sleep he’s getting.

And, the girls tell him that he’s handsome and smart and beg him to come visit — unlike Hawkeye, the only other woman in his life, who glares and reminds him of how much paperwork he has left to do.

A part of him sags with relief into flirting with _anyone,_ and he doesn’t let himself think of why.

_“She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?”_

_“She’s my subordinate, Catherine.”_

_“You boys and your silly_ rules.”

Roy does well enough to score a promotion to Colonel and bring Hawkeye up to Second Lieutenant. She’s much more fastidious with her responsibilities than he is, though, and is handed First Lieutenant before long. More men are placed under his command, and he grows to like them before he quite knows what’s happening.

The Lieutenant informs him that he’s getting soft in his old age, but he sees the way her eyes crinkle when Breda cracks a joke that makes Fuery choke on nothing at all.

He learns what it feels like to have people trust him, and grows accustomed to the burden of protecting them — as he said he would. He knows his men are at ease in their posts, and their work performance outstrips most of the other teams in the building as a result. He makes sure that nothing suspicious happens too closely to them, shelters them from the growing web of unease that’s connecting to _too much_ in _too many places._ He makes sure they are safe, and they make sure that their families are safe, and … Roy does truly believe that’s the least that humans can do for one another.

“It’s working,” he tells Hawkeye one late night, after too much coffee and too much paperwork. “I protect my team, and they protect their team, and so on. It’s working.”

“Yes,” she agrees, her voice quiet in the late night hush. “Yes, sir, it is.”

He looks up at her, wishing, wondering, but she speaks again before he can pull his mind back.

“As long as I’m here to make sure _you_ don’t get assassinated.”

“I still think I can look out for myself,” he says, matching her tone and shaking the dangerous cobwebs out of his mind.

“And I would challenge you to test that theory, sir, but you are engaging in behavior too risky for that.”

“Rain check,” he agrees.

“Rain wouldn’t be good for you either, sir, with all due respect.”

She’s almost laughing now, and he grumbles about insubordination which makes her roll her eyes.

He has to admit that he _did_ hand her that one.

* * *

After Roy watches Edward Elric complete the exam that makes him a state alchemist, he knows that whatever efforts he’s making to uncover the rot are insufficient. There’s a night of tossing and turning, debating the pros and cons, before he finally decides to stop agonizing over a decision that, ultimately, isn’t his.

“How do you feel about espionage?” he asks the Lieutenant.

They’re eating lunch at the bistro near her apartment, and it’s Saturday. He feels paranoid for running his eyes over all the faces nearby before speaking, but he honestly doesn’t know if it’s paranoia or good sense at this point.

“I’ll skip over the part where I pretend you might be asking theoretically,” she says, taking a bite of her sandwich and raising her eyebrows.

“Thank you,” he says, giving her a look that she meets with a contemplative expression.

He watches the bright life in her eyes, and he feels more settled than he thinks he should.

“Things are getting that serious, Colonel?” she asks.

“I keep hitting walls in the leads I can follow without suspicion,” he says. “I don’t know what other options I have.”

“Alright,” she says, taking another bite.

“Alright?” he echoes, blinking. Unable to believe that’s the end of the conversation.

“Alright,” she confirms with a mouth full of sandwich. She swallows, then looks up at him, wiping her mouth with a smile. “Did you think I would say no?”

“No, but I thought you would have more questions, Lieutenant,” he says honestly.

“Oh, well,” she says, sitting back and shrugging as she examines her sandwich for the next optimal bite. “I’m sure I’ll have questions when you actually ask me to do something, sir. Too many questions. I shouldn’t waste any now.”

He snorts, then finally starts eating his own lunch.

“How am I going to tell you about anything I learn?” she asks. “We can’t talk at work. And if we meet too much on the weekend, it will look suspicious.”

“I’ll call you.”

“You’ll call me.”

He can sense her raised eyebrows, even as he swirls his pasta on his fork.

“I already make a lot of calls from the office.”

He can clock the exact moment that she realizes what he’s implying. It takes two bites of pasta, and he grins around the noodles when she speaks again.

“You aren’t serious, Colonel.”

“I made the cover for _exactly_ this kind of reason.”

“You want me to pretend to be a prostitute.”

“No, _I’m_ just going to pretend you’re a prostitute. And they’re _call girls_ , Lieutenant. There’s no need to be crass.”

“I fail to see how that’s any better, sir.”

“I’m the only one making a fool of myself?” he tries.

She narrows her eyes, examining him as she weighs the remainder of her sandwich in her hand.

“Fine,” she agrees, reluctantly. “But the act is all on you, sir.”

“I could introduce you to the girls, if you wanted to get in character.”

“Not funny, Colonel,” she says, but she’s definitely chuckling into her sandwich, and Roy laughs too. “But I wouldn’t mind meeting them, anyway.”

Roy eyes her, trying to determine her motives, and she looks up to meet his eyes. Something sparks in her gaze, and it makes him want to both look away and never look away ever again.

“For purely business purposes,” she says, but it doesn’t look like that’s what she means, and Roy doesn’t know what to do with that.

* * *

With Hughes’ murder, a doorway opens up that Roy didn’t even know was there. A doorway into darkness, from which there can be no return.

He has known dark days. He has known the suffocation of guilt and anger and self-recrimination. He has known fury at injustice, at concepts, at faceless organizations.

He has never before felt such focused rage for _one specific entity._ Whoever had murdered Hughes had clearly done so to further the agenda of whatever Roy had been chasing since he first sat behind a desk after Ishval. Every step he takes, every piece of knowledge he acquires, brings him closer to discovering that entity. He eliminates suspects, narrowing closer and closer to the moment when he knows he will be looking into the eyes that watched his best friend’s life drip away.

Every step he takes brings him closer to that door, and makes it clearer and clearer what is on that other side. It marks the line between justice and hatred. The line between equivalent exchange and furious vengeance.

When he’s close enough to feel the chill of the darkness that lies there, he realizes that there will be no coming back if he crosses that thin line. He will no longer be able to be the head of the government that Amestris so desperately needs, and he will no longer be able to trust even himself. He wants to think that he has the willpower to touch the line without crossing it, to breathe in the seductive darkness without actually letting it flow over his skin. But logically, he does not know what he will be capable of. Every piece of information ratchets up the heat of anger under his skin to a temperature he has not felt yet, and he is wary of his own inexperience.

He needs a fallback plan. If he loses control, if he steps into the darkness, he has to know that he will not destroy everything else around him.

So he asks the one person that he knows can stop him. The one person with enough nerve and loyalty to pull the trigger, who he will not kill before they can try.

He is powerful. He can kill hundreds with a snap of his fingers. This is the only fallback plan that he himself could not stop in the midst of explosion — because he knows with a certainty that extends beyond anything he has ever learned or known that he could not kill Hawkeye. Not in any state, not in any boiling point of rage. And he hates to put that weight on her, but he must.

If he explodes, it must be a controlled detonation.

When Envy finally admits to the truth, _taunts_ him with it, Roy feels the blinding rush of absolute fury. The loop of anger, knowledge, action spins with punishing swiftness. It pushes him right up to the edge of the doorway, wobbling on the cusp of irreversible darkness.

He knows the effect of fire on flesh, and he is accurate within three degrees, within two inches. Moving targets don’t make him hesitate. All he can think about is Hughes and how _this thing_ stole every moment of the rest of his life. Every birthday with his daughter. Every anniversary with his wife. Every quiet moment with a newspaper, every proud accomplishment. All of them, wiped away in a moment by this laughing horror who had not murdered Hughes for any reason empathetic or understandable. They had murdered a man out of _convenience._ Because it was easier for Hughes to be dead than alive.

Somewhere in the midst of burning out Envy’s eyes, their tongue, scorching all the flesh from their bones repeatedly, Roy steps through the doorway.

His anger freezes into something even more horrible as the darkness consumes him. He can feel the pain now, the pain that had been the undercurrent of everything. The terrible loss of something ripped away unexpectedly, something torn away too soon. It takes his breath away with the vicious depth of it, outweighing even the blinding fury.

Envy struggles under his boot, and all logic deserts him.

Hawkeye is shouting at him to stop, ordering him to stop, doing everything short of _begging_ him to stop. Her gun is trained on him, and it doesn’t move. He hardly sees it out of the corner of his eye, but he knows it doesn’t shake.

She doesn’t know that he is already gone, that he took the last step of his life somewhere in the stoking flames of the duel. She tries to appeal to reason that no longer exists. But he just stares at Envy, calculating with chilling swiftness the best way to make them suffer _most_ as their life leaves them. He knows that Envy will not suffer as much as he himself has, that he cannot make this thing feel the drowning suffocation of loss, but he can _try._

Roy knows it is only a matter of time now before Hawkeye realizes what he has done, before the promised bullet ends everything. He only hopes he can kill Envy first.

But still, she throws her hand into the darkness and tries to pull him out.

She is quiet as the others arrive, ripping Envy out of his reach and shouting things that he knows are true but he does not _care._ The pain and anger are all that matters, and they demand _blood._

She tells him again that she will not let him destroy himself, that she will kill Envy. She doesn’t know that he’s already destroyed himself. Death seems like a relief in comparison to _this,_ and he is glad he made a fallback plan to rescue everyone from himself.

But there’s something in her voice that cuts through the deafening rush, something that makes him ask what she will do then. He expects something that will give him the last piece of closure he needs to burn away into death with some measure of peace.

When she says that she will follow close behind him, it yanks on the last part of him that exists.

He does not care enough to save himself.

He does not care enough to save the world.

But he will _always_ care enough to save her.

So he grabs onto the hand in the darkness, blindly screaming his anger down an empty corridor with a burst of flame, and lets her yank him out of inescapable blackness and back into the pounding heat and glorious light. He’s shaky, more scared of himself than he ever has been, as he apologizes. Hawkeye is shaky too, now that the danger is past.

Roy stares at the hands that pulled him out of something irreversible, marvels at the voice that managed to reach him when he was beyond everything.

“Thank you,” he says. It is vastly unequal to the task, but they are already moving. The world is still in danger, and it does not stop for personal vengeance and minor miracles.

“Of course.”

* * *

When Roy had begun following trails to find the corruption he _knew_ was in the government _somewhere,_ he did not expect the journey to be so long and convoluted. He did not expect to team up with an irritating alchemical prodigy, a Xingese prince, an Ishvalan mercenary, or _any_ of the strange crew that stood beside him in sunlight he could no longer see as the world tried to fall.

He expected to find some misguided military officials. He expected to present evidence to the officers higher up the chain and get the people fired who had started the mess. He expected to organize what was left and create an efficient, protected system.

He certainly didn’t expect that, at the end of it all, the results of his search would reveal inhuman beings infiltrating the government and trying to mine human souls for energy.

He didn’t expect to find that the homunculi had instilled a rot so deep in the foundation of the military that cutting it out would mean effectively destroying the government.

He hadn’t _meant_ to start a coup, in other words. Not really. But one thing leads to another, and following the next logical steps sometimes means kidnapping the fuhrer’s wife and flipping the coin on public opinion versus functional government.

“I’m sorry, Colonel Mustang, but I’m not following.”

“I’m not going to justify my actions to you.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

The man is staring at him. Roy can feel it, even if he can’t see it. He sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Can you repeat the question?”

“I asked how you were coping with planning for the future.”

“Ah,” Roy says. “That.”

“Yes.”

Roy leans back in the chair. He had adopted a familiar posture while, apparently, ranting at the therapist: elbows on the desk, shoulders hunched forward, fingers laced. His _lecture face,_ Hawkeye calls it.

“I don’t see how my plans would change,” he says at last. “I can do anything now that I could before, in terms of my career.”

“What about your personal life?” the man asks.

“I don’t —“ He cuts himself off, because that’s not strictly true. He _does_ have a personal life. It’s just irrelevant.

“You don’t… what?”

“My personal life is not affected.”

“Colonel, you’ve been through a majorly traumatic event, and completely lost one of your senses.”

“I’m _aware_ of that,” Roy says, annoyed.

“I’m glad, because it seems like you aren’t taking it seriously,” the man says, and while the words might be sarcastic from someone else, Thomas seems genuinely glad. Roy can’t decide if he likes that or not.

“I take everything seriously,” Roy argues. “I’ve considered it. I’ve thought through the implications, readjusted the details in my plans, and am ready to move forward.”

“It’s been a week.”

“I _know that.”_

“I’m only saying,” Thomas says, and the breath he takes makes Roy suspect that he’s annoyed. Good. That makes both of them. “I’m only saying that you need to take some time to think this through. _Really_ think it through. I know you’re on medical leave. Is there anywhere you can go? Get away from Central for a bit, maybe with a friend? Your aunt?”

“No,” he says shortly, irrationally annoyed at the mention of his aunt, even though he knows it’s in his file. And the man would have been irresponsible not to read it. “I don’t have friends outside of work, and my aunt is — already traveling.”

Silence stretches between them for a moment, and Roy has to keep his fingers from drumming on the desk. The inability to read faces is one of the most annoying aspects of losing his sight. It makes the silence meaningless.

“Colonel Mustang, I think it is extremely important for you to physically remove yourself from the context of the events and spend some time with your thoughts.”

“I’ve already told you it would be impossible,” Roy snaps, then closes his eyes and pulls in a breath to continue in a more measured voice. “And I think it would be foolhardy for me to travel alone for the time being.”

“I can go through the channels to get an official recommendation for someone to join you as part of their duties,” Thomas says.

The fact that someone would need to be _ordered_ to take a glorified pity-vacation with him is possibly the most irksome thing that Roy has ever considered in his life.

“What happens if I say no?”

“I’ll need to increase the frequency of our meetings so I can more closely monitor your mental state.”

“We already meet _every week.”_

“Some clients need to meet three times a week until they have a firm grasp on their needs moving forward.”

“My _mental state_ is just fine, and I have a perfectly good grasp of my needs,” Roy argues, his heart rate speeding up as his annoyance turns to anger. “I lost my sight. Not my _brain._ Not my ability to _cope._ Not my ability to _work.”_

“This isn’t a request, Colonel Mustang,” Thomas says, in a voice too calm for the ultimatum he’s laying down. “If you don’t follow my recommendations, one or the other, I’ll need to file a complaint with your superiors. I guarantee that will have long-lasting implications on your career.”

“Are you threatening me?” Roy says through his teeth.

“No,” Thomas says, and his voice is definitely annoyed now. “I’m doing my _job._ You need to do yours, sir. And right now, your job is dealing with this. So, are you taking a trip, or are we increasing our meeting frequency?”

 _“Listen to the therapist,”_ Hawkeye had said, her voice a warning.

 _“I’m not going to ignore him,”_ Roy had grumbled.

_“You will when he makes you angry.”_

_“Then he shouldn’t make me angry.”_

_“He has to do his job,”_ she had countered.

_“His job is to make me angry?”_

_“His job is to tell you the truth, whether or not it’s what_ you _think is the truth.”_

_“Then clearly it’s not—“_

_“He’s the one who signs off on your mental health paperwork,”_ she interrupted. _“So his truth matters a little more than yours right now.”_

“I’ll take the trip,” Roy sighs, leaning back in the chair again.

“Excellent. I’ll submit the request for a week of alternative assignment.”

“A week?” Roy protests. “I was thinking a couple of days.”

“A week,” Thomas confirms, and Roy has to press his mouth into a line to stop the disagreement from spilling out. “Do you have a place in mind?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Roy mutters.

“Let me know if you’d like suggestions.”

Roy can’t help his eyes from flickering into a glare, even though he has no earthly idea if they’re pointing anywhere near the right direction. But he doesn’t say anything, and Thomas doesn’t acknowledge the look.

“I know you were the subject of some targeted personnel maneuvers over the last few months…” Thomas starts, and again Roy feels a flare of irrational annoyance that something like that is now common knowledge. Common enough that his _therapist_ just traipses out with it like it’s nothing. Like spreading out his men to all four corners of the country and intentionally placing them in deadly situations was just a _personnel maneuver._

Thomas is still talking, but it takes Roy a moment to hear what he’s saying over the rush of blood in his ears.

“—than yours. Who should I submit the recommendation for? A few names would be preferable, in case they have urgent duties.”

“Lieutenants Hawkeye, Breda, or Falman. Sergeant Fuery.”

“In that order?” He can hear Thomas writing the names down.

Roy hesitates, though he doesn’t know why.

“Yes. In that order.”

* * *

The required vacation passes in the fashion that he suspects Hawkeye knew it would. Which just makes him _more irritated._

He takes the trip with Fuery. He’s supposed to _think_ and _sit in his feelings_ and all kinds of ridiculous things that Thomas had reminded him of before he left the office. A stubborn part of him wants to do exactly the opposite, but the rational part of him sounds like Hawkeye when it reminds him that this is the only way to be done with Thomas.

And anyway, a week is a long time. It would have required a massive amount of effort to _avoid_ thinking about the one thing that makes every moment of his day stutter and shift around it.

When he returns from the week with a sheaf of papers filled with Fuery’s dutiful dictation, he can almost _feel_ Hawkeye’s smugness from across the room.

“Wipe that look off your face, Lieutenant,” he says, knowing it will annoy her. “And dial up the Central Library.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, but she’s still smug.

When he hangs up with the library, he hears the soft sound of paper brushing against paper.

“‘Learn Braille,’” she says, clearly reading off of one of the sheets. “‘Research which publications can be ordered in Braille. Look into interpreters.’”

“I could have done some of that while I was in the country, but Fuery wouldn’t let me use the phone,” Roy says, keeping a hand on the counter as he cautiously walks in the direction of the kitchen table.

“He was probably instructed to help you _rest,”_ the Lieutenant says drily.

“This _was_ restful,” Roy defends. “And stop reading my notes. Some of that is private.”

“Which part? The to-do lists, or the five year plan?”

He makes a noise of growly impatience in his throat, but she just chuckles.

“I just looked at the headings, sir. I didn’t realize they were classified. I apologize.”

Her words are easy. Ready for it to be a true apology if he needs it to be, and ready to brush it away if he was just being irritable.

He’s struck in that moment with how her face looks when she does that. Every muscle easy, even as her posture is professional and unyielding. Her eyes meet his, searching them.

He will never see that expression again.

His fingers hit the edge of the counter and he stops, trying to remember how far it is to the table.

He hears Hawkeye stand up, and frustration surges through him.

“I’ve _got it,”_ he says, his voice more snappish than he means for it to be.

“Of course, sir,” Hawkeye says, but she doesn’t sit back down. That makes him even more irritated.

He takes the first step into unprotected nothingness, then the next. He focuses on remembering the layout of his apartment as he continues forward.

Then he hits something that _definitely_ isn’t the table and stumbles. A firm hand is on his arm in a moment, and another on his chest. She braces him and keeps him upright, pulling away the moment he catches his balance.

Heat rushes his face, and the swell of embarrassment is covered immediately by a wave of anger.

“I said I had it _, Lieutenant.”_

“Yes, sir,” she says, and the technically true statement sounds nothing like an apology.

She pities him. Something about that realization punches all the air out of his chest. He remembers, for some reason, Master Hawkeye hacking and retching as he lay curled on the bed. The Lieutenant wiping his mouth, dutifully brushing his hair away from his face, changing the sheets.

“You can go home, Lieutenant,” he says, laying a tentative hand on whatever he had tripped on. It is, infuriatingly, an armchair. He had been hopelessly off-course. “It’s late.”

“I’m staying, sir,” she says. Her voice is flat, and there’s too much in it for him to read without seeing her face.

“I don’t need you.”

The words sound sharp, and he wants to take them back and rub off the edges of them before he lets them go, but he’s too angry to pull back now.

“Then it will be an easy night for both of us,” she says.

“Lieutenant.”

“The spare room is made up. We discussed this before you left. The doctor made it clear that you needed someone here.”

“I don’t—“

“I’m _staying,”_ she says, with rare firmness. She is stubborn, too, but not often. Not when he’s angry, anyway.

He could fight with her. He could order her to leave. He could try to convince her that he doesn’t need help.

But he doesn’t. He won’t be able to convince her, and if he orders her, she might submit a report that he’s going against the doctor’s order. She probably won’t, but she might.

The rest of the night passes in some facsimile of what things used to be like, but the strangeness pervades every aspect of their interactions.

Finally, he understands what Thomas might have meant about processing the change. About considering all the implications, and grieving the loss.

Falling asleep that night, he thinks he has never felt so alone.

* * *

Roy keeps seeing Thomas.

He learns Braille.

He completes checklist items.

He talks through the revisions of his plan with Hawkeye, argues with her about whether or not they’re realistic. They agree to disagree on the capacity of his mind to memorize information that he can no longer reference in paper form. That particular stalemate isn’t solved until he forgets the name of a crucial representative at an officially-unofficial military gala and Hawkeye has to whisper it in his ear while flicking something imaginary off the rank on his shoulder.

He revises his plans _again_ until even Hawkeye has to admit that they should be attainable with a bit of luck and a lot of work.

Roy keeps himself busy trying to mitigate the stutter of his blindness that ripples out to everything in his life. He learns how to use the cane. He memorizes the layout of the places he is in the most. He practices Braille until his fingertips are numb and hot.

He lasts a few weeks before what Thomas had warned him would happen, happens. The darkness becomes too much, _too much,_ and everything fades to horrifying silence around him as his breathing grows ragged and his heart pumps far too fast.

It’s something Roy is unfortunately familiar with, but that doesn’t make it any less exhausting. Especially when the _I told you so_ is notably absent from Hawkeye’s mouth, which smacks of _more pity._ She sits with him until it passes, her hand on his shoulder, her voice calm and speaking of nothing, anything. Clearly just extending a lifeline for him to latch onto when it ended.

He apologizes, too tired to be angry with himself, with Thomas, and she hands him a cup of tea.

“Let’s talk, next time,” she says, her voice light. But he can sense the trepidation under it. She’s putting out a hand, half-expecting to be burned.

“Okay,” he says, because she may pity him, but her voice doesn’t _sound_ like pity.

So the next time he feels his heart start to race for no reason, his hands start to shake, he tells her. And she turns on the kettle before sitting next to him on the couch and telling him to start talking.

“I don’t know what to talk about.”

“You could start with what’s bothering you.”

“I don’t know what’s bothering me right now.”

“Then just talk about anything that’s bothering you. There’s always _something.”_

He should be annoyed at that, but the cusp of spiraling silence is upon him, and it edges out everything else.

“There isn’t nearly enough information available in Braille,” he says, because that’s been bothering him for days, so it’s easy to identify.

“What kind of information?”

“ _Any_ information. Political, scientific, alchemical — all of it.”

“Hm,” she hums, and he feels her leaning back into the couch.

The motion pulls him closer to her, off balance, and he shifts positions to maintain equilibrium. She’s sitting cross-legged on the couch, so her knee juts slightly into his thigh.

“Anything I can get my hands on is at least five years old, maybe older,” he says.

“No leads on an interpreter?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “No active ones that are interested in interpreting the things I want. I’ve called.”

“What about Sheska?”

“She knows Braille?” He sits up so quickly that it throws off his balance again, and he has to slam a hand down on the cushion to stay upright.

“No, well, I don’t _think_ so,” Hawkeye says, slowly. Almost apologetically. “I meant that she seems like the type who would want to learn, and then interpret. You know. For _fun.”_

He can hear the incredulity in her voice, and the disappointment he felt when she started speaking is eased by sudden amusement.

“True,” he acknowledges. “I should have thought of her.”

The kettle whistles, and Hawkeye pushes off the couch to get it, taking her point of contact with her. Roy takes a few deep breaths, analyzing himself. He definitely feels less shaky. That’s a good sign.

“It’s still steeping,” Hawkeye says, entering the room again with measured steps. Carrying steaming mugs, probably. “Do you want to hold yours, or should I put it on the coffee table in front of you?”

“Coffee table,” he says, noting her specific words and letting them go. He’s trying not to resent every small action she does to help him, because it’s irrational. But emotions are, infuriatingly, not rational. So it is proving difficult.

He frowns as the mug hits the table with the muted _click._

“It’s on a coaster,” she says, clearly trying to interpret his face. A luxury that he no longer has.

“I assumed you weren’t a barbarian,” he says, with more heat than he means. He sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose.

“What are you thinking?” she asks after a pause. The hand extended with every expectation of being burned.

“That I wish I could see your face,” he says without thinking. The moment he hears himself, he closes one eye and squints the other, grateful that his hand is still in front of his face. “Faces in general, I mean. It’s hard to — have conversations. When I can’t see people’s faces.”

“Oh,” she says, and she sounds a little strange. Thrown, probably, by the weirdness of his statement.

“People say as much with their faces as they do with their words,” he says.

“I know,” she says, and he hears a small sound. He wonders if she opened her mouth and closed it again. Or if she’s doing the thing where she chews on half of her bottom lip and blows out a breath through the other half. He can’t _tell._

“What are you doing?” he asks, immediately regretting it when the silence stretches out after his question. He can’t bring himself to clarify _or_ back away, trapped in a purgatory that he built around himself.

“Thinking,” she says at last. “Trying to imagine it. But if you mean what is my _face_ doing…” She trails off, considering. To her credit, she sounds like she is having a completely normal conversation, not describing her own face to someone who is quite possibly going mad.

“I’m squinting a little, like I do when I’m thinking. As if that helps the mental processes. I started to say something and then stopped, so you might have heard me open and close my mouth. I’m looking up at the ceiling and then back down again, like there might be answers written somewhere. I probably look a little ridiculous, but you’ve seen worse.”

He can’t help smiling. His memories supply images as she talks, and he can almost see her by the time she finishes. Almost. And, strangely, it’s enough. For tonight. For this exact moment, it’s enough.

“Thank you,” he says, leaning forward and reaching for the mug. After less than a minute of questing, his fingers find it.

_For the tea. For the patience. For describing your own face to a blind man. For everything._

“Of course, sir.”

* * *

“When is Riza coming?” Georgia asks, and even though Roy doesn’t know her as well as the others, the pout of her mouth is so exaggerated that it’s completely audible.

“When is _Jean_ coming?” Lily corrects.

“Oh, la,” Charlotte says with a laugh. “Lily, you’re incorrigible.”

“What? He’s handsome, and he knows how to have a lively conversation.”

“If you mean he knows how to flirt with absolutely no reservations, then I agree,” June puts in.

“Of course that’s what I mean. What _else_ would I mean?”

“Roy, you didn’t answer my question.” Georgia’s pout has gotten, if possible, more prominent.

“She said she would come by this weekend,” Roy says, amused and at-ease, surrounded by the chatter of the girls as they get dressed for the evening.

 _“He can’t see! This is perfect! Now we can catch up and get ready at the same time!”_ Lily had screeched.

 _“You could have done that anyway,”_ Roy had teased, which earned him a smack from Georgia and pinch from Freida.

 _“Just keep your hands to yourself,”_ June had warned.

As if he had ever done anything worse than nudging them with his elbow.

“Ugh, I’m always so tired on the weekends,” Georgia complains. “We can’t have a proper girl time.”

“Riza doesn’t like girl time,” Lily advises.

“Then why does she come?” Georgia shoots back. “Hm? It’s not for _your_ fascinating conversation.”

“Don’t argue,” Charlotte worries. Roy can hear her fluttering between them.

“Charles, please,” June says. “Let them fight. Lily’s right, and so is Georgia. They’ll figure it out.”

“When are you going to make it official with her, anyway?” Lily asks, and it takes Roy several beats of silence before he realizes she was talking to him.

“What?” he says, stupidly, because he’s explained fraternization to them a thousand times, and he knows she cannot possibly still be confused.

The girls have always teased him about girlfriends, pushing him to date any female within a mile radius. With Hawkeye under his command and doing espionage during his time trying to uncover military secrets, the girls had seen a lot of her. There was always at least one comment every time he came to visit, but they were usually obviously teasing. He could do better, they always said afterwards — which he doubted, but was flattered by nonetheless.

This seems more pointed.

“She looks at you like you’ve hung the moon, Roy Mustang,” Lily says.

“She does not,” he says firmly, because he knows for a fact that that is not the case.

“She does so,” Lily argues. “Not obviously. Not like Charles looks at what’s-his-name.”

“Robert,” Freida supplies.

“Thank you: Robert.”

“I do not!”

“Yes you do, now hush, I’m making a point.” Lily composes herself with a prim sniff before continuing. “She does, is all I’m saying. She just looks different.”

“That’s extremely convincing,” Roy says, his tone dry but amused.

“Thank you,” Lily says. “And yes, I can tell that you’re teasing me, but I’m going to pretend that you’ve sprouted a bit of wisdom and are listening to your big sister.”

“You’re younger than me. A _lot_ younger than me.”

“But I’m wiser, and that’s what counts here.”

He chuckles, shaking his head.

“Alright, Lily.”

“Don’t be patronizing,” she admonishes, and he can imagine her pointing a makeup brush at him. “It’s not becoming.”

“I’ll work on it,” he promises.

Roy is pretty sure he can hear her roll her eyes.

* * *

The first morning Roy wakes up and doesn’t have to _remember_ that he can’t see, he thinks he might be finally getting used to it. And that realization is both a relief and a sharp pain. Like the sudden absence of burning flame. It’s no longer searing through the flesh, but he still feels the crackle of throbbing heat.

He had been looking forward to this, to the absence of the horrible _swoop_ when he sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. He had told himself over and over that it would happen, that he would just _sit up_ and not go through a shortened version of confusion and loss before he even started his day.

But now that it’s happened, it feels too much like accepting the unacceptable. While there is some part of him that resists it, he is held in the tension of not totally accepting his own weakness.

He hadn’t realized he was doing that.

He thinks that Thomas would be very smug about how _emotionally intelligent_ he’s being, and that at least dredges up annoyance. Which is far less vulnerable and depressing than the rest of it.

Roy hears noise outside the bedroom door as he turns off the alarm and listens. Quiet footsteps, gentle movements in the kitchen. The click of the gas burner turning on is barely audible through the door; the _squeak_ - _thump_ of the cabinets opening and closing is more clear.

Like clockwork, there’s a soft knock on his door a moment later. Schedules and predictability have always been reassuring to him, but this one is even more so. Perhaps because he’s still blurry with sleep. That’s probably it.

“Come in,” he says.

“Good morning, sir,” the Lieutenant says, and the bottom of the door scrapes slightly on the carpet as it opens.

“Good morning.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough.”

“You don’t look well,” she says, in a bluntness that makes him close his eyes against a swell of _something_ he cannot bring himself to touch.

“I — it’s … a little complicated,” he tries.

“Complicated, already?” she says, but her voice is warm and in good humor. “You just woke up, General.”

“Yes, well. That’s the thing, sort of.”

“Are you going to talk about it, or are you just going to dance around it until I call Thomas and tell him you need a session?”

That makes Roy pull a face, which makes Hawkeye chuckle. The kettle whistles.

“I’ll be right back with tea. Don’t move; you might lose your nerve.”

“Uncalled for,” he mutters, annoyed again. Mostly because he knows she at least partially has a point.

He doesn’t _like_ talking about these things, and the longer he waits to do so, the less likely it will be that he does. He’s learned that about himself over the last few years. “ _Emotional intelligence,”_ says Thomas’ stupid smug voice again.

Ugh.

The Lieutenant is back in a minute, and he hears the _shush_ of a cheap cardboard coaster hitting the bedside table before she puts the mug down. Then the bed dips as she sits on the end.

“What’s so complicated?” she asks. “And don’t drink the tea yet. It’s still steeping.”

“I don’t actually enjoy consuming boiling liquids, so I don’t think that’s a concern.”

She makes a noise somewhere between disbelief and agreement, then blows across the top of her own mug.

“What?”

“Just remembering your encounters with scalding coffee at the office, sir,” she says, and Roy shakes his head.

“That’s different. I didn’t know it was so hot.”

“Even though I told you.”

“You did not.”

“Every time, General.”

“That is just objectively not true.”

“You can ask Breda. But you’re deflecting.”

Roy points his glare in what he hopes is approximately the right direction.

“Have you been talking to Thomas?”

“No, I’ve been talking to Halia,” she counters. “And I deflect a lot, according to her, so the word is prominent in my mind. We have that in common.”

Roy humphs, but Hawkeye is silent, giving him space. What had seemed so weighty when he woke up feels less important now. More trivial after normal conversation — more trivial with someone else close by to remind him that the world goes on.

But he presses forward, because this is what he did with the promotion, with Hughes. And he’s not sure the Lieutenant will stay around if he does _that_ again.

“When I wake up,” he says slowly, “I always forget that I can’t see. Just for a few seconds. It’s probably because I still dream in — well, whatever the case may be, I forget. There’s this moment when my brain puts it together again that is — bad — but then it passes, and I move on.”

She’s still quiet, but he can hear her shift slightly, feel the mattress move and readjust.

“Today I didn’t forget.”

Hawkeye still doesn’t say anything. He wishes he could see her face — a wish of convenience that no longer aches.

“It’s complicated,” she says, her words deliberate, but there’s hesitation under them that he can barely hear. “Because that means it feels more … real?”

The fact that she is willing to try, willing to attempt to understand something that he doesn’t even understand himself, makes his eyes sting briefly.

“Maybe?” he says, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m glad, obviously, to skip over _that_ every morning. But — yes. It seems like … resignation. Like giving up.”

“Even though you know it’s not,” she says, doing him the favor of not telling him what he already knows is true.

“Yes,” he says with a sigh. “Even though I know it’s not. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t have to,” she says simply.

He reaches for the mug on the side table, just resting his fingers against it to feel the heat without thinking about it. It’s still too hot to touch, and he curls his fingers back immediately.

“I wish it would,” he starts to murmur, but his voice grows stronger as he continues. “I want to be _done_ dealing with this, Hawkeye. I want for everything to catch up to where I was two _years_ ago, accepting it and moving forward. I don’t like that there are these — these — loose ends. That keep cropping up when I think I’m finally past it all.”

“If only life were that simple,” she says, and there’s a wryness in her tone that would be amusement if it wasn’t so heavy. “But that’s grief, I think. We’ve lost too much to ever leave it all behind us. Moving forward means going backwards sometimes, just to prove that you’re still strong enough to turn back around and keep going.”

“Prove to who?” Roy asks.

“Ourselves?” she guesses, and the question is vulnerable between them. She’s speaking her mind without thinking through all the implications, and it feels like nights on a riverbank, shadows clinging to their elbows and feet.

“I don’t need to prove anything to myself,” Roy mutters, but there’s a shift of fabric against skin that Roy thinks must be her shaking her head.

“We both know that’s not true, General.”

He runs a hand through his hair.

“I just hate relying on people all the time, for everything. I think it all circles back to that, _always.”_

“Yes, I can see how that would be the case,” she says, and her flat tone _does_ hold amusement this time. “You always have resented the fact that you’re not omnipotent.”

“That’s not — that is _not_ true,” he splutters, jerking his head out of his hands and glaring in her direction. She’s laughing now, and despite the quiet words of a moment ago, it doesn’t seem out of place.

“Be honest,” she commands him, the gravity ruined by the echoes of laughter in her voice. “Tell me that you haven’t wished you could be entirely self-sufficient, even before you lost your sight. And I’ll be able to tell if you’re lying, so don’t try it.”

He narrows his eyes at her, then puts his chin in his hand and thinks about it. Has he wished that? Not actively, but…

It _would_ have been much easier to get everything done on his own. Everything would have been done exactly the way he wanted it to be done, every time. He would never have to wonder if something was being taken care of, if something was completed, if, if, if.

But then he thinks of what he would never have had, if he had supernaturally been able to do everything on his own. He thinks of his team, the concern and loyalty that flows through them. How he learned from them to relax, to enjoy simple things, to laugh after Ishval.

He thinks of Hughes, a poster child for keeping perspective when the world falls apart. How he learned to pause and remember the people he was doing all of this for, when the _correctness_ wasn’t enough.

He thinks of Hawkeye. Never letting him get too far into his own head. Pulling him off the brink. Holding a gun to his head to keep him from destroying more lives than just his own.

“No,” he says honestly. “I haven’t.”

He thinks she’s going to make some quip about how he wouldn’t last a day without her, but she doesn’t.

Probably because she knows it’s true, for all her joking.

* * *

Roy retires from the military two years before the next election. He’s been keeping tabs on the political status of the country, now that he has a willing interpreter who can churn out Braille versions of recent publications almost as fast as they’re published.

Sometimes he can’t wait, and Hawkeye is still happy to read them aloud, but he prefers reading them himself. She gets annoyed when he makes her stop and reread whole sections several times, arguing out loud with the author after every sentence. And when she gets annoyed, she plays devil’s advocate to annoy _him,_ and then they’re both arguing about something neither of them care very much about. Which wastes a lot of time — even though Roy thinks that Hawkeye secretly enjoys it.

The strangest part about retiring is figuring out what to call everyone. Hawkeye seems to slip effortlessly into first names, with occasional surnames. It takes Roy the better part of two years to start calling any of his former team by their given names, but at least he’s stopped referring to their rank by accident. Especially when Falman and Fuery both get a promotion so it isn’t even the _correct_ rank.

Some of the names come easier than others. Jean, for example, is the simplest — the floor girls have been chattering his name for _years_ so it doesn’t sound strange out in the open. Fuery he can get about half the time, and mostly because the man always looks so startled and pleased to be referred to so informally. Like he’s forgotten what his own name is until Roy reminds him.

Breda and Falman he barely tries with, because no one but Hawkeye calls them by their first names anyway, and they don’t seem to notice or care.

He thinks that Hawkeye should be the easiest. After all, he called her Riza for years _before_ the military. But she still calls him Mustang, and something about her name seems off-balance on his tongue, so he follows her lead. If she is uncomfortable after all these years, he doesn’t want to push her. It seems strange, and he hadn’t thought there was anything that _could_ be uncomfortable between them after so many years, but he doesn’t push into it. She doesn’t seem upset. It’s probably just a habit, and he doesn’t ask. It’s easier for him, anyway.

Roy starts preparing for his candidacy the morning after his retirement banquet. Hawkeye’s is sometime the next week, and she almost doesn’t tell him. He finds out when she mentions it offhand, and when he presses, she just shrugs and says it isn’t important. And he can tell from her voice that she thinks it isn’t.

“ _I_ think it’s important,” he says, not wanting to tread on something that is so inarguably hers. “You’ve achieved a lot in your time.”

“I helped _you_ achieve a lot,” she argues, but there’s no bite to her words. “That’s all I really wanted to do. We already celebrated those achievements. I’m satisfied.”

“Are you going to go?”

“I think they may dock my retirement if I don’t,” she grumbles. Hearing Hawkeye petulant is a rarity, and Roy almost chuckles.

“Can I go?”

“Are you going to _network_ at my retirement party?” she accuses.

“No!” he exclaims. “Well, maybe. But that’s not why—“

“You’re impossible,” she says, but she’s laughing. He hears a crumple of paper, then something bounces off his forehead.

“I hope that wasn’t important,” Roy grouses, rubbing away the itch from the impact. “And I just meant going to _support you._ I won’t even look up the guest list in advance.”

“You can look up the guest list,” she says, still chuckling. “I cannot emphasize enough how much I do not care about this banquet. Actually, you using it to network will make it feel much less useless. Can I count it as campaign manager hours?”

“Double dipping in your first week at a new job,” Roy says, affecting a disappointed tone and giving her his lecture face.

“Technically it would be my second week. I’m counting these hours.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford you at this rate,” he says.

“You definitely can’t,” she agrees. “I’ve already clocked twenty hours this week.”

He groans, and she laughs.

They go to her retirement banquet, and Roy networks. In a military function where he is no longer a part of the military, he’s pleased to start hearing more definite whispers about who is disgruntled with Fuhrer Grummand. He makes note of all the voices he recognizes, and quizzes Hawkeye for the rest.

Those are his first military targets.

His official campaign starts six months later, but by then he’s on monthly-lunch basis with over half of his military targets and has managed to get eight “where are they now?” articles in five different publications, to get his name back out into public eye.

By the time his campaign officially kicks off, he’s accumulated a team that he trusts. Mostly his old team volunteering part time — except Havoc who had already retired and was happy to drain Roy’s bank account with questionable hours that they constantly argued over. Hawkeye found a brilliant director of public relations in Patricia, and she fits into the group so well that Roy almost forgets she hasn’t been there all along.

They are all kept busy with the campaign, and it feels similar to the time he had spent trying to uncover corruption all those years ago. Similar, but much more low-stakes, Hawkeye reminds him whenever he gets too deep into his own head about something.

“The world isn’t going to explode,” she likes to say. “Perspective, Mustang.”

Still, it fills the hours between waking and sleeping just as well. He’s closer to his plan, his dream, than he’s ever been. Every choice seems pivotal, every hour a precious resource. It’s not until he reaches the last weeks that he feels the finality of it all. For the first time, he doesn’t have anything to do when he finishes what he’s working on now. There are things that crop up, small crises, misprints, last-minute appearances. But for the most part, when he does the work that needs to be done before the election, there is nothing else to _do._

The empty hands and the silence lead where they always do: thinking and overthinking. There’s something that hovers on the edge of his mind, but he can’t quite reach it. When he gets close, his heart pounds and his hands start to shake.

He thinks Hawkeye must sense it too, that looming _something,_ because she’s quieter. She isn’t pulling away, she isn’t upset, but when he asks her a question it takes her a moment — like she’s coming from far away.

And that scares him more than anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! The next (and final) chapter will be back to 1920 to resolve the cliffhanger from last week. Reviews make my day - thank you to those of you who already have and those of you who will!


	10. Part 5 - Chapter 10

— **1920 —**

Hawkeye stumbles to her feet before Roy can even finish saying her name, the curry forgotten on the table between them. Roy stands up too, alarmed and cursing the fact that he can’t read her face. He throws out a hand and, by some wild combination of determination and luck, he thinks he does _actually_ manage to reach her sleeve. But he doesn’t have time to marvel at his achievement, because Hawkeye practically _flies_ out of the apartment, and his grip is not enough to keep her.

“Wait!” he calls, taking two long strides toward the door before his sense overcomes his surprise and he slows down. There’s a big difference between navigating his apartment by memory at a normal pace, and trying to run through it.

By the time he reaches the door and pulls it open, he can’t hear her footsteps at all. At the rate she was going, he’s not surprised. She’s probably already down the stairs and across the parking lot.

Instinct propels him forward, wanting to chase after her, but something heavier keeps his feet still. He has learned to ignore his instincts in favor of the weight that comes from lessons hard-earned, so he doesn’t move. His fingers grip the doorframe as he pulls in air through his nose and _waits._ Even though every second feels like it might kill him.

Confusion squirms in his mind through the exhaustion of being awake for almost 24 hours, and it takes him too long to realize what is keeping his feet in place.

She was scared.

That realization brings up a fierce stab of something that is quickly washed away by anger. Anger that is now, for one of the few times that he can remember, directed at himself.

He knows he must have done something _,_ but for the life of him he cannot figure out what he did that would make her _scared._ Hawkeye is not a woman easily scared. When faced with an unkillable foe, she emptied every clip and screamed in its face. Weak with blood loss and internal injuries, she kept a hand on his shoulder and directed his alchemy when he couldn’t see — knowing that if her estimates were off by more than a few feet, he could injure an ally. She has more nerve and courage than most people could ever have.

He thinks it took so long to recognize her fear because he hadn’t _seen_ it like that in almost two decades. Only when the sound of her retreating steps sounded for a moment like the pound of shoes against earth, leaving him alone in the starlit dark, did it finally register. It had just been so _long._

But that’s not strictly true, he realizes. He’s seen her fear since then. After all, she had been scared in the war, of course. They all had been. She hadn’t run _then_.

Why hadn’t she run then?

The answer eludes him, and he has a feeling that the connection is _vitally important_ to figuring out how to fix this.

But his mind is still squirming, and his chest is constricting with a mess of feelings he doesn’t think will ever untangle. They hit him in flashes and disappear again, maddening and too quick to analyze.

At the forefront is something he has felt only twice before: the inevitability of losing her. Once in the war when a fever was running its course, and once five years ago when her blood soaked through his uniform and her eyes fluttered shut after he refused to perform human transmutation. Both times, there was nothing he could do. _Nothing._

The terrible familiarity of it makes him grip the doorframe tighter and contemplate running after her, no matter the consequences, because this time he _can do something._ But he doesn’t, because even if he cannot grasp the _how’s_ and _why’s_ , he now knows two things: she is scared, and he is losing her.

The only thing in this apartment that could have scared her was him. And if she is scared of him, he cannot chase after her. He has hurt her too many times to do that to her, even if it makes him grind his teeth and slump against the door.

 _Is_ she scared of him? He cannot bear the thought of it. She has seen him at his very worst at every single point, and she has never given any indication of fear. He has yelled, killed, snapped fire inches from her nose, burned a section of her skin, given orders she didn’t understand, and almost lost himself to darkness and taken all of them down with him — twice. She did not flinch in any instance, and he has always felt her unwavering trust.

He doesn’t know what he could have done to have shaken that trust and unearthed a fear so deep that she would run from him, but he fears it is something that has been coming for a long time and he has just _missed it._

Roy remembers, suddenly, that looming thing at the edge of his mind. He had been too busy with his campaign, too close to finally tasting the end of his dream, to think about it properly. And now he thinks that might have been a mistake — because attaining his dream and losing her is not a trade he is willing to make.

* * *

Riza wakes up the next morning with Hayate snuggled under her chin and yesterday’s clothes tossed over the chair. The first thing she remembers as she blinks away the sleep that clings to her, is that they _won._ That pulls a tired smile onto her face, but doesn’t explain the combination of dread and groggy fear currently crawling under her skin.

It only takes a few more blinks to remember what happened _after_ they won, and that’s almost enough to tuck her right back into bed with the blankets over her head.

Ridiculous. She had acted _ridiculous._ In the calm, clear, cool, light of day, there was no justification for her actions. She had run because — what? Mustang _sounded strange?_ Because he said her _name?_

She allows herself a moment of wallowing mortification, petting Hayate while staring at the wall with narrowed eyes and indulging the inner rampage. It feels far too similar to the last time she had experienced such acute mortification, though, so she pulls herself off the bed with a brisk shake of the head. She’s an adult, and she was tired. Mustang has certainly put her through much worse when _he_ was tired, so he will have to understand.

Unless she wasn’t imagining it, and there was _something_ under his words that she didn’t let him say. Something that made her so on-edge in the first place.

“If there is, I’m sure it will still be there tomorrow,” she mutters to herself, shrugging on comfortable clothes and yawning.

She hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep, but restlessness and the habits of over a decade are a deadly combination. So she makes some tea and toast, and contemplates what to do with the day.

The team had agreed that the day after the election would be a free day, no matter the outcome, and she had been too busy to properly think of something to _do_ with her time in the weeks leading up.

Normally, a day free to read and slowly tidy up her neglected apartment would sound wonderful, but she finds herself chewing her lip with nervous energy. No, she needs to do something more active. More social. Something that will get her mind off of — whatever it is that her mind is on.

With that decided, she reaches for the phone. She’ll call Rebecca and see if her friend wants to meet at the shooting range and then go to brunch. That sounds like a perfectly _relaxing_ —

The phone rings as soon as she touches it, making her startle and pull back in surprise. The tea sloshes in her mug, but she had thankfully drunk enough that it kisses the edge without spilling over.

Clearing her throat, panic laced with dread thrumming through her for reasons she cannot, will not, _cannot,_ understand, she picks up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello.” The dread hikes up at the sound of the voice it had _clearly_ been expecting to hear.

Strangely, disconcertingly, she finds herself almost responding with a “sir.” She’s sure Halia would say that has something to do with formality being her defense mechanism against vulnerability, but now is _not_ the time. She thought she had worked through all that years ago, when she painstakingly shifted the way she addressed everyone on the team.

Well. Almost everyone.

Momentarily surprised by the ghost of an issue she thought she had under control, she doesn’t respond.

“Have you eaten?” he says.

“Today is a free day,” her mouth says, without permission from her brain, and she scrunches her nose up in confusion. “ _What?”_ she mouths at Hayate, who just grins, traitorously lacking in wisdom on the apparent mutiny of her mouth from her processing centers.

“I — yes,” he says, clearly as confused by her response as she is. “It’s not about work.”

“Oh,” she says, brilliantly.

“We could meet at Hammond’s, if you’re free,” he says.

“I already ate.” Toast, but it’s not a lie.

“Alright.”

Weird tension practically oozes through the phone line, and Riza honestly can’t tell if it’s all her, or if Mustang is being strange also.

“Sorry,” she says belatedly.

“No, it’s—“ He makes that _humph_ noise that means something has gotten away from him, and Riza can truly empathize with that sentiment. “We need to talk, Hawkeye. I’m not sure what happened last night—“

“I was tired,” she cuts him off in a rush.

“You were scared,” he says bluntly, and it makes her wince, her fingers wrapping around the phone receiver more tightly. “I don’t want you to be scared of — me.”

“I’m not,” she says immediately, and she swears she can feel him relax marginally. So she says it again, quiet and serious so he knows she’s telling the truth. “I’m not scared of you, Mustang.”

“Okay,” he says, his voice sounding less guarded, less careful. Relieved, if only slightly. “That’s — good. But you were scared of _something_ , and we need to talk about it.”

“I really—“

“ _Please_ ,” he says, with emphasis.

She doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t push. She knows he won’t force her to do anything, just like she wouldn’t force him. She knows that if she says no, he will try to believe whatever excuses she gives him and trust that everything will sort out in the end. It’s what she would do, anyway, and they are usually of the same mind in things like this — even if the exact execution of the idea is a little different.

Riza tries to think of why she’s hesitating. She tries to draw it all through a lens of speculation and reflection and examine it until she’s found the roots and branches and knows exactly what to do. But her mind is hitting a wall before she can even properly figure out what the wall _is._ She had hit this wall before, but never tried to break it down. It never seemed that important. It always seemed better, safer, to just leave it alone.

And now there’s too much pressure. She can hear Mustang on the other end of the phone, waiting, _waiting,_ for a simple answer that lays on the other side of something impenetrable.

Mustang is right; she’s scared. She just hadn’t realized it, really, until he said it — which annoys her. She doesn’t like not knowing things about _herself._ And she doesn’t know _why_ she’s scared, unless this is all evidence that she’s finally losing her mind.

“I can’t,” she says, and her voice sounds strange even to her. Tears burn at her eyes that she doesn’t _understand_ and that scares her more. “I’m sorry, Mustang,” she whispers, then hangs up the phone.

* * *

Roy awakens feeling less rested than he had when he had gone to bed. The knowledge of his political victory is still around his shoulders, but it pales in significance to the more immediate problem.

He needs to talk to Hawkeye. He needs to hear her breathing, feel her foot bump against his, and listen to whatever it is that upset her so badly.

So he calls her, and every word comes out sideways and incomplete. When she hangs up, her whispered apology rings in his ears for an hour before he knows that he has to _get out._

Maybe there is something about his apartment, he muses, like an insane person. He calls Madame Christmas and asks her to send a car for him, _discreetly_.

Maybe his apartment has some kind of strange curse on it now. Maybe _that’s_ why Hawkeye ran away, and not because she feels this strange ominous thing creeping out of his brain and into hers.

_“I’ll send Bella. She just learned how to drive and she wants to show off.”_

Roy is ready at the door when he hears the clatter of heels on the stairs and hopes Madame Christmas had reminded the girl to dress conservatively. He pulls open the door after one knock and finds himself enveloped in soft arms and an ear-piercing shriek.

“Roy-boy!” she screams, jumping up and down while still hugging him. “I can’t believe it! You’re the fuhrer!”

“Yes,” he agrees, wrapping his arms around the younger girl and pulling her close in a fit of affection he can’t think about. “You sound surprised, Bella.”

“I’m just so excited!” she says, giggling. “All the girls are celebrating today. Please tell me you’ll stay for a while. You will, won’t you?”

Roy is pretty sure he can hear a door opening in the hall, so he pulls his arms back quickly and steps fully into the hallway.

“Thanks for the ride,” he says, locking the door behind him. “Jean was busy.”

“He’s a terrible driver,” Bella agrees, and Roy can’t be sure if she’s playing along with the story or just making conversation.

The girls are always like that; it’s frightening. He can see how they get so much information.

Bella loops her arm through his and they walk together out to the car, her maintaining a steady enough silence that Roy is fairly certain she also caught sight of someone in the hallway. When they’re in the car, she starts talking again.

“I put down a mat for Hayate; I thought he would be here too. Where is he?”

Bella puts the car in gear and starts driving. Roy had been prepared for a jolting nightmare when Madame Christmas had said she just learned, but Bella surprises him. She drives a bit slowly, but smooth and stable. Much better than Havoc.

“He was at Hawkeye’s last night. The party was going to go too late.”

“Oh! I haven’t seen Riza in _ages,”_ Bella gushes. _“_ Is she coming, too?”

“No.”

He’s pretty sure he can feel her eyes boring into the side of his head, but she doesn’t say anything. Roy can’t decide if that’s better or worse.

“We are taking a day off from — everything,” he says after a minute. “It’s been nothing but campaigning for eighteen months.”

“What are you going to do with all your free time?” she says, teasing.

He grins at her and winks.

“Well, I did have a few ideas.”

“You’re terrible.” He feels something brush against his face, like a smack that just missed.

“You said there’s a celebration today?”

“Oh, yes,” Bella says, and he can hear her nodding emphatically. “Madame Christmas is going to be giving a free round to anyone with a Vote Mustang button. The girls told their boyfriends who told their friends and there’s already people dropping by to see if we’re open.”

“What time is it?”

“Only just eight,” she giggles. “Cook is waving pots and pans at them and saying she doesn’t make breakfast. Anyway, it’s _our_ celebration first. We don’t want any boys ruining it.”

Roy cuts her a look that he hopes is at least close to hitting target.

“Except you, Roy,” she says, laughing. “ _La._ You’re the man of honor! Cook was chopping up all sorts of things to make you an omelette when I left.”

“I thought she didn’t make breakfast.”

Bella just laughs, and the car jolts to an abrupt stop.

“We’re here!” Bella says, all enthusiasm again as she throws her car door open.

Roy is barely out of the car before Bella is around his elbow and tugging again.

 _“Roy!”_ scream at least five voices, all of them wobbling with the unmistakable tilt of morning champagne.

“Sssh!” hisses Bella, then she talks more quietly in Roy’s ear. “We’re going in the back. Madame Christmas said you wanted to be discreet. It’s why I’m wearing my most boring dress.”

“Yes,” Roy says with a wince.

Visiting Madame Christmas’ was probably not his wisest idea, and Patricia would kill him in cold blood if she found it in the papers tomorrow. He could imagine the headline now: NEW FUHRER CELEBRATES WITH QUESTIONABLE COMPANY and a photo of him sneaking in the back door.

He had been banking on the early hour, but what’s done is done. _Exiting_ the bar would be a bigger problem, but he could figure that out later.

“Bella didn’t kill you!” Georgia declares jubilantly, the moment he walks through the door. “It was her first drive with a passenger!”

“I couldn’t even tell,” Roy says, only lying a little bit.

Someone presses a champagne flute into his hand, and he dearly hopes it’s mixed with something, because he’s in exactly the kind of mood where that could get him into real trouble.

“I could be a political chau _ffeur!”_ Bella declares proudly.

She is still attempting to lead him through the bar, but the other girls halt his progress to kiss him on both cheeks, frame his face in their hands, throw their arms around him, and generally congratulate him in the way they always have. The music of their voices is a steady hum behind the swirling mess of his brain.

“Thank you, thank you,” he says, chuckling and quickly shifting an arm before it gets awkwardly sandwiched between him and Freida.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” Freida says, batting him in the shoulder. “I haven’t had enough champagne for _that,_ and neither have you. Drink up!”

Roy lets himself get pulled into a chair at a table that is quickly jammed full of whipping skirts and clanking glasses while the girls get settled.

“To Roy! The best brother anyone could ask for, and the best fuhrer Amestris will ever have!” Charlotte calls out.

“Here here!” the rest of them cry out, and Roy raises his flute too, feeling liquid slosh over his fingers as it’s tapped by at least five others.

By the time he finally takes a drink, the flute is half empty and his hand is sticky with what is, alarmingly, _very_ strong champagne. It goes down _far_ too smoothly, and the flute is replaced with another as soon as it’s empty.

The girls, as they always do, distract him with their stories and questions. They keep the knots of confusion and flashes of emotion from taking him over — and the champagne helps, too. By the time he realizes his head is swimming, he also realizes he has no idea how many flutes of champagne he’s had.

Only Lily pulling him out of his chair saves him from another glass. She shouts at the table about needing to talk to him about her cousin’s political aspirations, which makes all the girls groan. At least one of them tries to tug him into his chair again, but Lily slaps the hand away with a warning and a promise to bring him back.

Roy can’t keep track of where they are going, even though he knows the bar almost as well as his own apartment. He thinks that is proof that he’s _definitely_ had too much champagne, and he also thinks he _definitely_ should be more concerned about that than he is.

She pulls him into a room and closes the door, cutting off the shouting and celebration almost completely with the solid click of the latch.

“I hope you don’t actually want to talk about politics,” Roy says, taking in a slow breath through his nose and tasting only sweet fumes on his tongue. Definitely too much champagne. “I’m not — I cannot talk about that.”

“No, of course not,” Lily says, her eye roll almost audible. “Sit down before you fall over.”

He hears the scrape of a chair next to him and puts out a hand, finding the back before lowering himself into it.

“Is everything alright?” Roy asks slowly, and the dread which had been almost completely buried under alcohol and laughter rises to the surface again.

“I don’t know, Roy,” Lily says, and he hears the squeak of a bed frame as she sits on it. They’re close enough that he’s sure he could nudge her feet with his. “You tell me.”

“What do you mean?” He genuinely has no idea where she is going with this, and he thinks again that he should be concerned.

“I mean, you’ve been the very image of self-control and propriety for — well, for _ever,_ but in the past two years even more so. And then you win the election and you show up at the bar at _eight in the morning_ and seem determined to be half-seas-over before lunch.”

“Everyone is drinking!” Roy defends, relief and irritation surging up together, but not quite getting rid of the dread. He is unreasonably annoyed that Lily managed to pull that back up when he was having such a _nice time._

“You’re not ‘everyone,’ Roy Mustang,” she says severely, making him even _more_ annoyed, if that was possible. “So, you tell me what’s going on right now. Are you finally losing it? You’re the fuhrer and now you’ve lost all direction in your life?”

“No, of course not,” Roy snaps, done with this line of questioning. “I know exactly what I’m doing with my life. I have a plan.”

He starts to stand up, but a hand on his shoulder shoves him back into his seat. She’s talking before he can tell her that she’s out of line.

“Okay, then what?” Lily presses, her hand still on his shoulder in case he is thinking about standing up again. “Something is wrong, and you’re not leaving this room until you tell me. And if we stay in here too long, you _know_ they’re going to think _things are happening_ , and then not only will you _still_ have to tell me what’s wrong but you’ll _also_ never live that down.”

“That’s low,” Roy growls.

Lily doesn’t answer. He can hear her folding her arms, and that makes him angry in a way that he cannot properly justify. An irritated noise escapes him as he rubs the bridge of his nose, but Lily is unmoved.

“If I didn’t know you better, Roy,” Lily says after the silence stretches too long, “I would say you were having girl trouble.”

His head snaps up without his permission.

“What?”

“Getting zozzled first thing in the morning, should be celebrating but seems sad about something, shorter temper than usual, defensive.” There’s a shifting noise after each statement, and he assumes she must be counting on her fingers. “It’s classic girl troubles, but I _know_ you don’t have a girlfriend.”

“No, I don’t,” he says. “And I’m not sad about something.”

“Please,” she says, and a finger pokes his forehead. “I know when you’re sad. I’ve been around since you lost your sight. I know what it looks like. You’re good at hiding it, but I can tell. So can June.”

“I’m not—“ he starts before the finger pokes him in the forehead again. He resists the urge to grab it, but only barely.

“So, are we going to sit in here all morning?” Lily asks. “I _guarantee_ you this will be easier while you still have all that champagne in your system.”

“I don’t know, Lily,” he says, dropping his head into his hands.

“Bull,” she says immediately.

He growls and lifts his head enough to glare.

“I _don’t know.”_

“You know _something,”_ she argues. “Start somewhere.”

The silence stretches again as Roy tries to weigh the pros and cons of talking this over with _Lily_ in a mind fuzzed almost completely with alcohol.

He cannot weigh them accurately; he cannot even hold more than one reason in his mind at a time, really. But he also feels like he is on the edge of a precipice and Lily is the only one who can even see the cliff.

He is not a man to take action without reasoning, but he is also a man held captive by a seasoned interrogator while under the influence of a reckless amount of celebratory champagne. There is only so much he thinks he can do in this state, so he takes the leap and hopes it’s not completely stupid.

“You can’t spread this around, Lil,” he says at last, trying to break his fall with anything he can find on the way down.

“I thought you said you didn’t know what it was,” she says immediately.

“I _don’t,”_ he says, annoyed. “But whatever I say to you, stays here. Alright?”

“Alright, alright,” she says, and he narrows his eyes. Clearly, she sees that, because she continues. “The girls love you, Roy. It doesn’t matter, whatever it is.”

“I know,” he sighs, because he knows it won’t matter to _them_ , but it will matter to _him_ when he hits the bottom and is sober enough to know this was a bad idea. “Just promise.”

“I promise. Misery me, this had better be state secrets at _least.”_

“It’s Hawkeye,” he starts, and he hears an intake of breath but she doesn’t interrupt. “Something is — weird. Things have felt strange for… I don’t know, a while now, I guess. But we haven’t talked about it. We’ve both been busy with the campaign. But last night, we were eating after the party and she just — _ran_ out of the apartment. I mean, literally _ran,_ Lily.”

“What, you were just taking a bite of sandwich and she just hoofed it?” Lily says, sounding disbelieving.

“No, we were talking.”

“Okay,” she says slowly, deliberately. “About what?”

“Stop doing that.”

“You’re being impossible!”

“We weren’t talking about _anything,”_ Roy snaps. “We were arguing about the curry, but we weren’t mad. She tried to grab it from me, threatened to … rearrange the furniture, I think?”

Lily snorts and Roy sighs.

“I don’t _know,”_ Roy says for the hundredth time in this conversation. “It was nothing. Nothing _happened_ but it felt like — like —“

“Like?” Lily says, quiet enough that it doesn’t scrape against the raw edge of his frustration.

“Like I was losing her,” Roy says, and his head is in his hands again.

“At the risk of ruining this tentative … thing … we have going on here,” Lily says, clearly gesturing between them. “Are you sure you weren’t just tired? Or she wasn’t just tired?”

“I tried to call this morning and see if she would talk.”

“And you are just mentioning this now,” she mutters, but Roy ignores her.

“She sounded strange, and she said she _couldn’t_ talk to me, and then she apologized and hung up.”

“And that’s when you came here and decided to drown your sorrows,” Lily says, like her sentence finishes the most depressing narrative she’s heard all week.

“Yes — no!” Roy says, irritated again. “I just couldn’t be alone in that apartment a moment longer.”

“Look, Roy,” Lily says, suddenly serious. It tempers the anger that keeps flaring up, but pulls harder on the dread. “You and Hawkeye go way back, right? Like _all the way back.”_

“Yes,” Roy says, when it’s clear she’s waiting for confirmation.

“Okay, then whatever this is, is nothing,” Lily says, sounding an awful lot like Madame Christmas. “When you’ve known someone that long, you figure it out. You just _do.”_

“How am I supposed to figure it out if she won’t _talk_ to me?” Roy asks. He can hear that his voice is raw, and he pinches the bridge of his nose as his eyes sting again.

He _hates_ asking for advice, but hours of tossing and turning and hours more of spinning out on the subject have yielded _nothing._ Worse than nothing: dread and confusion and more questions than he’d started with.

Lily hesitates, and he hears her take two breaths before she speaks again. Her voice is as careful as he’s ever heard it.

“Do you like her, Roy?”

“Of course I—“

“Don’t do that,” she interrupts, a hand slapping over his mouth. Her next words are fierce, but her tone is still slow and serious. “Don’t you say a word until you’re going to answer this question _seriously._ You think about what I’m asking you. You think about it _all the way through,_ Roy Mustang, and you don’t open your mouth until you are ready to tell me the god’s honest truth all the way down to your bones.”

She pulls her hand away, leaving the slight residue of warmth and sweat against his skin.

“Do you _like_ Riza?”

And the thing hovering on the edge of his mind comes into full view.

Nights on a riverbank, telling himself every excuse he could to keep himself from kissing her. Arguing theories neither of them could fully understand. Pulling each other off the edge of death and darkness and beyond. Hands pressed together, quick and heavy like magnets colliding and breaking apart. Blood pooling on the floor, too dark and too bright, and feeling like _his_ heart was the one that was slowing to a stop. Wondering, for the first time in his life, if he _could_ go on.

“Yes,” he says, or thinks he says, because he can barely hear himself.

“Oh, Roy,” Lily sighs, but it’s so very soft that it almost sounds like she might be on the verge of tears. She presses a kiss to his forehead. “You are the smartest idiot I’ve ever met.”

* * *

Riza knows she should stay home and think about this strange and terrible development. _Really_ think about it. She should make three mugs of tea that all get cold before she actually finishes them, and order food to be brought to her so she doesn’t interrupt her concentration. And maybe she could draw some diagrams, for good measure. Timelines. Notes.

But she does not do that. She calls Rebecca, like she had been planning to do already, and they go to the shooting range, and then brunch. She doesn’t think too much about what it means that she’s avoiding even _herself_ on this matter, but she’s sure Halia will be happy to tell her all about it whenever they meet again.

“Mmhmm,” Riza says absently into her waffle as Rebecca says something.

“Riza,” Rebecca says sharply. “You are not listening.”

“I am!” Riza says immediately, even though it’s a lie and she can tell by the look on Rebecca’s face that she knows it too.

“I just said that Jean asked me to marry him, and all you have to say is ‘mmhmm?’” Rebecca accuses.

“He did _what?”_ Riza splutters, slamming her fork down.

“That was the reaction I was looking for,” Rebecca says, leaning back in her chair in satisfaction.

“He didn’t,” Riza says, still in shock. “Tell me he didn’t.”

“Of course he didn’t,” Rebecca says, waving a hand. “But wouldn’t it be funny?”

“Hilarious,” Riza grumbles, going back to her waffle now that her heart has wedged down from her throat.

“What’s got you so distracted?” Rebecca asks. “I thought you would be a little less out-of-it when the campaign was over. Don’t you get a break before you’re officially appointed to be the … department … director…?”

“Director of Foreign Affairs,” Riza supplies automatically.

“Yes, that,” Rebecca says, one finger held aloft in victory. “Sorry. I _will_ remember it when it’s your job, I promise.”

“It’s fine,” Riza says, shrugging one shoulder, because it is.

She and Mustang had talked about where her skills would best fit, and several positions were on the table before they decided on that one. She isn’t particularly attached to the job title. She hasn’t been particularly attached to any of her job titles, really. The actual job is more important.

The thought of Mustang twists her back to their phone conversation, like every thought of him has this morning. Running through the exchange and mentally chastising herself for every strange thing she had said. Since when had she been a complete—

“Riza!”

“Sorry,” Riza says, blinking rapidly and snapping her attention back to Rebecca. “I’m just tired. Really tired.”

“Go take a nap or something,” Rebecca says, brows furrowing slightly. “You really do look exhausted. Mustang has been working you too hard.”

“I work myself too hard,” Riza says, yawning and stretching as she gets up from the table. The mention of Mustang makes her muscles itch and she has the sudden urge to jog back to her apartment.

_I really am going insane._

“Call me later if you’re feeling up to it,” Rebecca says, waving a hand in farewell. “We can go out to celebrate! I’m sure you’ll get free drinks from everyone!”

“Okay,” Riza laughs, knowing that there is not any reason on earth that could compel her to go out with Rebecca for any kind of celebration today. Her friend was terrible to go out with, either being the world’s least subtle wingwoman or drinking so much so fast that the night was cut short by a quick taxi home. Riza didn’t feel like dealing with _either_ of those tonight.

By the time she reaches her apartment, she’s decided that a deep clean of the bathroom and kitchen are in order. She can’t even remember the last time either of them had gotten a thorough scrubbing, but it was surely not in the past year. Which was just disgusting, really, and definitely an excellent reason to clean them _right now_ and not do anything else.

She’s finished with the bathroom and mostly done with the kitchen when there’s a knock on her door.

“One second!” she yells, washing her hands quickly and trying to move hair out of her eyes with a sweaty, gritty arm.

It’s probably Vato with something from the venue that the owner had handed off in exchange for the key. Or maybe the neighbor who had been checking in on Hayate yesterday, returning the spare key. Whoever it is will be subjected to the vision of Riza in all her mid-cleaning glory, and she doesn’t exactly envy them the experience.

She pulls the door open with most of a pleasant smile already on her face, hoping it will make up for the lopsided bundle of hair on her head and the grime streaks on her arms and clothes.

The smile freezes when she sees who it is.

Two blinks of absolutely silent indecision, adrenaline flooding her system immediately, followed by a mess of emotions headed up by anger.

Mustang, on her doorstep.

Mustang on her doorstep when she had said _no._

Whether or not she _should_ have said it, she _did say it_.

“I said I couldn’t talk today,” she says, and she regrets the aggressive tone only because she knows it will probably start a fight in her hallway.

“I’m sorry,” he says at once, which is admittedly one of the only things he could have said that wouldn’t end with the door slamming in his face.

“You are not my commanding officer anymore,” she says fiercely, keeping her voice down in case anyone is listening so it comes out more like a hiss. “You don’t have any obligations on my time.”

“I know,” he says, and she can see irritation on his face like the words of her favorite book, but he is schooling it into all the corners, not letting it out. “I know you did. I’ll leave if you want me to. But I didn’t—“

He hesitates, so unlike him, and his fingers run across the top of his cane.

He’s dressed in that casual-formal way he always is — dress shirts and slacks, ties and coats and leather shoes. It’s not fair that he looks so put together while she’s standing here looking like even more of a mess than she feels. He can’t see her, though, which is a boon.

“I didn’t want to let you run away,” he says carefully, “without knowing someone would try to follow.”

She blinks at that, studying his face.

“What does _that_ mean?”

He just shifts uncomfortably on his feet. He looks ill at ease in a way she has not often seen him, and the only thing missing is—

He runs a hand through his hair, and she can’t help smiling, releasing a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

She doesn’t know what’s happening. She doesn’t know what to think or do or — _anything._ But she knows that she cannot leave Roy Mustang standing in the hallway of her apartment building. Not when he looks like that, not when he’s waiting on her words like he waits for precious little in this world.

He’s a man of taking, and he is waiting now for her to give. She cannot resist it, no matter what the consequences.

“Come in,” she sighs. “But I need to shower.”

“Okay,” he says, the confusion in the single word tempered by the sharp scent of cleaner when he walks into the apartment. “Ah. Cleaning.”

“Yes,” she says, like a challenge, but he doesn’t say anything.

 _“Hawkeye?”_ Mustang’s voice had called from his living room, barely audible.

 _“Yes?”_ She had turned off the running water in the tub so she could hear him better.

_“Are you cleaning the bathroom?”_

_“Yes?”_ she had said again, thinking it was fairly obvious what she was doing.

_“Are you — alright?”_

_“I think I can handle cleaning a bathroom,”_ she had said slowly.

_“You clean when you’re stressed.”_

_“I do not.”_

Footsteps padded up to the bathroom door, and she had pointedly _not_ looked at him, continuing to scrub the tub.

_“The last time you cleaned the bathroom was before your promotion.”_

_“Coincidence.”_

_“And you cleaned the kitchen while they shifted the personnel in my office while I was still on leave.”_

_“It hadn’t been cleaned in a year.”_

_“And you cleaned all the windows before Hayate took his guide-dog exam.”_

She stopped scrubbing then, turning to look at him with her most withering glare. She had to hope some amount of the power translated, even if he couldn’t see it.

_“What’s your point, Mustang?”_

_“I just want to make sure you’re alright,”_ he said, leaning against the doorframe. He was wearing his pajamas, and the casual familiarity of the moment ached for the space of a breath.

 _“I’m alright,”_ she said, then hesitated. _“I finished paying off my father’s house.”_

Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, and Mustang’s eyes looked distant. She wondered if it was too much, if he didn’t—

But then, he smiled.

_“Congratulations.”_

_“Thank you.”_

“Make yourself at home,” she says now. “I’ll let Hayate out to keep you company after I get the cleaning bottles off the floor.”

He’s already moving through to the living room, his steps sure. He swings the cane, but it looks more like precaution than analysis. He’s been here enough over the course of the campaign to know the layout of her rooms, and she’s kept the place free of obstacles just in case.

It only takes a moment to sweep the bottles under the sink and release Hayate from the bedroom. She hears him bound out to the living room, and then a low murmuring that must be Mustang conversing with the dog. Shaking her head, she grabs clothes that will help her feel more prepared than her grungy cleaning outfit will… for whatever this is. Then she heads to the (sparkling) bathroom.

It takes her the span of her shower to decide exactly what she’s going to say to Mustang. She rehearses the apologetic smile that will shape her words even if he can’t see it. She mouths and discards several phrases before finding one that is true but not perplexing.

Then she feels the ridges of burned flesh on her shoulder and hesitates, guilt surfacing in the bubbling confusion of emotions and thoughts she can’t seem to understand or control.

But she isn’t _lying._ She has no reason to feel guilty. She’s trying to reassure him. Trying to get things back to wherever they were so they can move forward.

Still, the nagging guilt persists as she towels off her hair and pulls on her clothes.

She decides she’s going to have to ignore it and deal with it later. She can’t deal with it _now,_ not with Mustang in her living room making everything _more confusing._

When she steps into the living room, Mustang’s head lifts toward the sound. Hayate is curled up next to him, his head on his thigh and that stupid-happy smile on his face that means Mustang has probably been petting him this whole time.

“You spoil him,” Riza says, sitting in the chair next to the couch. Close enough that it isn’t weird. Far enough away that it — isn’t weird.

“I don’t think you can spoil a dog by petting it,” Mustang says, raising an eyebrow. “And anyway, you’re one to talk.”

“He’s my pet. He’s your employee,” Riza points out, teasing.

But something flickers on Mustang’s face, and she realizes she’s stepped wrong. She’s just not sure _how._

The silence stretches too long.

“There’s something I need to say.” Mustang’s voice cuts through the silence too late, too late, and it takes everything Riza has to keep herself in the chair.

 _“You were scared of something_ ,” he had said on the phone this morning. She feels it again now, but doesn’t understand it. What is she scared of?

She sets her teeth in annoyed determination. Whatever it is, it’s not going to make her act like a lunatic _again._

“Okay,” she says.

She expects him to talk about last night. She readies her excuses, her careful words, her apologetic smile. She assembles them in her belt like her weapons, ready to go into battle and prepared for whatever he might try to do.

But he doesn’t talk about last night, and she is left empty-handed in the face of this wholly unexpected volley.

“When I came to your father’s house, I was young and proud,” he starts, and she blinks. “I thought I knew everything. I thought I was too smart to get fooled by things that other people were fooled by.”

He pauses too long, and Riza almost speaks. But he gathers his words faster than she can gather hers.

“I was an idiot,” he says. “A smart idiot. I didn’t know anything about life, but I thought I could just _think_ things through and set a plan for myself and make it happen.”

“You did make it happen,” Riza can’t help but point out.

“Yes, but—“

He pushes a hand through his hair again, and Riza watches the motion with a frown creeping onto her face. She doesn’t know why he’s saying this, but her heart is speeding up. And it feels a lot like a scared tired girl taking a walk after making a boy a birthday cake in a blizzard.

She folds her arms across herself like that will stop the ache of memory.

“In the war,” he continues after a moment, “I realized how much I _didn’t_ know. How this power your father gave me meant absolutely nothing in the face of death and loss and time. I realized how fickle life was, and how easily plans were set off course.”

“That’s when you decided to become fuhrer,” she says softly, feeling something ease even as something else clenches. “Instead of a military position.”

His aspirations are something she can listen to him talk about. Those are familiar ground. She knows the lay of the land here, and she can reach out and feel the security of safe words and thoughts all around her. It does not diminish the ache, but it does force some of the tension from her shoulders.

“Yes — no,” he says, blinking like she had thrown off his train of thought. “I hadn’t thought of fuhrer _specifically,_ but I had always assumed that the military would be a stepping stone to politics, eventually.”

She frowns as her assumptions drift away, leaving her again in confused silence with a swirl of feelings that don’t make _sense._

He continues, and she tries desperately to trace the throughline of this strange ramble. He often went on these long tangents, and sometimes the point wouldn’t be clear until the end. It was like watching Alex do a sketch without ever picking up the stick of graphite. It looked like a wobbly mess for most of the time, but once you figured out what it was, you couldn’t un-see it. Though with Alex, it was easier, because it was usually a portrait of one of the Armstrongs, and they all looked strangely alike.

“After the war, I started trying to figure out the corruption in the government. I thought we were safe — that it was something I could find and set to rights and move on.”

She chuckles without humor, shaking her head. She remembers his slow transition from annoyance with the military red tape to justified paranoia about how far the corruption went. She had stepped with him through all of it, the two of them keeping each other afloat.

He leans forward, and the motion distracts her, pulling her eyes. His elbows rest on his knees as he stares, unseeing, at the ground. She realizes, inconsequentially, that his top button is unbuttoned. She wonders if he did that on purpose.

“It got more dangerous than I could have ever imagined,” he continues. “Homunculi, murder, Hughes.”

“Philosopher’s stones.”

Riza is stuck now, watching him with a studied interest. She has to find out where this is going. He knows that she knows all of this, so there must be a very good point at the end of it.

She pulls her feet up into the chair, tucking one under her and pulling the knee of the other to rest her head against.

“When Lust left Jean and I to die in the laboratory,” he starts, and Riza almost jolts upright. He’s never talked about this to her. “I knew she was going to find you and Alphonse. I knew she would kill you.”

Mustang’s voice is hard, unyielding with the anger of memory.

Riza’s fingers dig into the flesh of her leg. She remembers. She knows.

Shooting every bullet she had, the sucking vacuum of _no_ that filled her when Lust had said Mustang was dead. Alphonse screaming as he threw up a wall of stone just in time to save her from her own weakness.

“I thought I would be too late,” he says, and his voice is strange for a moment before it solidifies once more. “The relief of getting there in time was even better than killing a supposedly-immortal being.”

“Better?” she says, because she can’t help herself. “Better than beating death?”

“Yes,” he says without hesitation, which is not the response she had been expecting. The ache in her chest grows stronger, radiating with every beat of her heart.

“And with Envy—” he starts, then stops when Riza’s feet hit the floor again.

“Stop,” she says softly, and she doesn’t know why but he _has_ to stop he _has to._

“You pulled me out,” he continues. But his face is turned toward her, and his brows are drawn, like he’s trying to listen and talk at the same time. “I was gone already, Riza. I was beyond saving, ready to melt off a boy’s _arm_ to _kill_ something.”

“But you didn’t,” she says around a lump in her throat, standing on wobbly legs. “Come on, Mustang. Why—“

“I didn’t, because of you,” he says. “Only because of you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she whispers, but her feet won’t move. “I was just following orders.”

“I should have realized it then,” he says. “I _should have_ but I was — there was so much happening, and even after it all, we were so busy.”

“Mustang, stop.”

“ _No_ ,” he says with emphasis that sounds nothing like a command and everything like arguing his point against hers. His face is not angry; she finds in it an echo of the ache pulsing through her limbs. “When you were bleeding out in my arms, it was the worst moment in my entire life, Riza. It was like everything I had ever done didn’t even _matter_ if you were just going to die while I did _nothing._ I didn’t know if I could keep living. Me!”

His head drops into his hands. Riza’s heart is thundering now, pounding out a reason, an explanation, an excuse with every thud. Trying to fumble up a wall of protection around herself against whatever it is he’s going to say, because she knows it’s going to kill her like she knows the patterns of the scars across her skin.

“Me, with the _plans_ and the _dreams_ and the _smarts_ and the _determination,”_ he’s continuing. “I realized right then that it didn’t matter. That none of it mattered, if you weren’t there.”

“I—“

She doesn’t know what she’s going to say, but thankfully Mustang tramples over it as he keeps talking. She’s not even entirely sure he had heard her. His chin is propped in his hand again, the warm glow from the lamp curving across his face. Making him look softer than he is.

“And then I lost my sight and everything changed, and then I was running for office because I was _so close_ and I woke up and realized I never — I’ve never — I haven’t —“

Riza is still standing, unable to move in one direction or the other. Trapped and waiting for whatever the final blow will be that will shatter her into a million tiny pieces. Mustang’s face is drawn and frustrated and _sad_ in a way that she wants to fix more than she wants to fix anything in this world.

She wants him to stop. She wants to smooth the lines off his face and whisper that it’s alright, that she’s not going anywhere, but she can’t. She can’t cross that boundary she put up for herself so long ago.

But Mustang stands, and she doesn’t move when he steps closer. His hand touches her elbow for a moment, gauging the distance, then drops away.

“Riza, I love you,” he whispers, in a voice she’s never heard.

She’s heard angry in every shade: annoyed, frustrated, irritated, angry, furious, raging. She’s heard happy and relieved and content. She’s heard tired and sleepy and alert, tipsy and sarcastic. She’s heard wistful, nostalgic, sad.

This voice is anguish and hope mixed together in breathless measure. This voice is a hand extended, confident in itself, but unsure of its acceptance.

She can’t speak. Tears spring to her eyes as the wall she had been trying to frantically compose crumbles away. As the ache grows so strong that it overcomes everything else. Years of grief and trying _so hard_ to put it all away battles with the euphoria of relief, and she thinks this must be too much for one person to hold.

She’s breathing too fast, and she might be crying, but since she is incapable of speech she does the only other thing that she can think to do to reassure him. She cannot bear the look on his face a moment longer.

She reaches out with trembling hands; one brushes his chest, the other his face. He startles slightly at the first touch, a breath of air escaping too fast, but doesn’t pull away.

His skin is warm, the jawline rough with stubble, but she cannot marvel at the miracle of this for long.

She kisses him on an instinct that will no longer be tied back under _should nots_ and _will nots_ and _can’ts._ She presses up on her toes, unable to catch her breath, and holding with bloody hands to a raw shattering hope that this could be _real._

That she could possibly be standing in the rubble of her own heart, and not be alone.

Arms wrap around her, one hand burying itself into her damp hair, and everything that’s left collapses in around her. She isn’t standing here alone. This _is real._

And then she’s kissing him with all the ferocity of impatience and time lost, and he’s matching her at every stroke. A hand at the small of her back pulls her up and in, up and in, until she thinks that surely she must be a part of him now.

The skin under her fingers moves over muscles and tendons and bones, and she has never felt anything more beautiful.

By the time they break apart, his breath is hot on her temple, and her cheek rests on his chest. So close to the pounding of the heart that has been her greatest treasure since even before she knew it was hers.

“So, I assume you’re not going to send me away,” he says, and the sarcasm in his tone is lessened significantly by the quiet warmth.

“I definitely am,” she whispers to his heart. “But only to get more curry.”

When he laughs, she can feel it even more than she can hear it. She thinks she could get used to that.

“I love you, too,” she says, and the _obviously_ is unspoken, but only just.

“Good,” he says, and for the first time Riza has ever heard, he sounds satisfied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've made it to the end, I hope you enjoyed! Reviews are always deeply appreciated. <3 They will be a great encouragement as I continue working on my next project. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. Yes, you. Thanks. <3


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